Prashant Kishor Launches Party Before Bihar Polls, Vows To End Liquor Ban

Former election strategist Prashant Kishor’s long-pending entry into electoral politics came today with the formal launch of his Jan Suraj group as a political party. The Jan Suraj Party is expected to contest in all seats of Bihar in the next assembly election. The party will be headed by Manoj BHarti, a retired officer of the Indian Foreign Service. Mr Kishor has said if elected, the party would end prohibition of liquor in the state and use the earnings to improve the education sector. 

Mr Kishor, who talks of changing the paradigm for voting — shifting it from caste and electoral sops to a vision for the future — had said who heads the party will be a decision of the people who worked for the group over the last two years. 

For more than two years, Mr Kishor has been travelling across the state, raising awareness about what he says ought to be election agenda. 

Earlier this year, he had announced that he was ready for a formal launch as a political party. His Jan Suraj, he had said, would offer the people a fresh alternative.

“In Bihar, in the last 25 to 30 years, people have been voting for RJD or BJP. That compulsion should end. The alternate should not belong to any dynastic party, but people who wish to form the party,” he had said.

Mr Kishor had started the Jan Suraj initiative after a brief stint in the ruling Janata Dal United of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the Congress’s aborted effort to recruit him to revitalise the party. 

Offered a slot on the party’s “Empowered Action Group” after extensive talks in 2022, Mr Kishor had declined, with pointed remarks about the Congress’s lack of “collective will to fix deep rooted structural problems”.

He had launched the Jan Sena with a yatra and says its conversion to a political party is only the halfway mark on his journey. 

Mr Kishor has said he aims to visit every village in Bihar to educate residents on improving their living standards and those of their children, encouraging people not to vote under pressure from misguided leaders and work towards the progress of the state on key parameters including education, agriculture, and employment.

The next stage of his initiative would be presenting a blueprint of solutions for the challenges Bihar is facing, he has said.