Former political strategist Prashant Kishor on Sunday announced that his Jan Suraaj campaign in Bihar will be launched as a political party on October 2, on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, reported The Indian Express.
Kishor confirmed earlier this month that Jan Suraaj will contest the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections. He has publicly hinted at this possibility on several occassions.
“Other details, such as party leadership, will be decided in due course,” Kishor said at a state-level workshop of the campaign in Patna. He added that a seven-member empowered committee, constituted on Friday, would hold elections to the party’s top posts between August 15 and August 20, reported India Today.
Kishor said that 25 applicants capable of recruiting 5,000 persons each into the party’s cadre could apply to be its president.
Kishor’s Jan Suraaj campaign commenced on October 2, 2022, in the form of an ongoing padyatra (journey on foot) in the state. It focuses on issues such as education, healthcare, unemployment, proportional representation for Bihar’s citizens and the state’s overall development.
“There are five broad social groups: general category, OBCs [Other Backward Classes], EBCs [Extremely Backward Classes], SCs [Scheduled Castes], STs [Scheduled Tribes] and Muslims,” Kishor said on Sunday. “As Dalits are the most disadvantaged, the first president of the new party will come from this section. We have also decided on giving rotational representation, which means the tenure of the president would be for a year. Either an EBC or a Muslim will be our second president, followed by a candidate from the OBC and general category. The idea is to give representation to all sections in the five-year electoral term.”
Jagriti Thakur, the granddaughter of socialist leader and former Bihar Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur, joined the Jan Suraaj campaign on Sunday, reported The Indian Express.
Jagriti Thakur is the daughter of Virendra Nath Thakur, the younger son of the former chief minister. Virendra’s elder brother Ram Nath Thakur is a Janata Dal (United) Rajya Sabha MP and a Union minister.
Former Rashtriya Janata Dal MLC Rambali Singh Chandravanshi, who was on Friday expelled from the Bihar legislative council for indiscipline, also joined the Jan Suraaj campaign along with former Indian Police Service officer Anand Mishra.
Kishor is known for his involvement in the campaign that saw the Bharatiya Janata Party come to power in 2014 by securing the absolute majority in the Lok Sabha.
His political consultancy firm, the Indian Political Action Committee, or I-PAC for short, is believed to have led the Janata Dal (United) to victory in the 2015 Bihar Assembly election, the Trinamool Congress to victory in West Bengal in 2021, the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi during Assembly elections in 2020 and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu in 2021. Kishor also worked on the YSR Congress Party’s successful campaign for the 2019 Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh.
Also read: How Prashant Kishor has changed India’s political vocabulary
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