Patna: Prashant Kishor has said that he has not been able to sleep properly since his party, Jan Suraj, failed to win a single seat in the 2025 Bihar assembly elections. Speaking in an exclusive interview after the results, Kishor admitted that the defeat hit him very hard and has been disturbing him for days. However, he made it clear that he will not give up on his political journey in Bihar. According to him, a person only loses when they accept defeat, and he is not ready to do that.
Kishor explained that Jan Suraj did not fight the election on the usual issues of caste and religion, which dominate state politics. Instead, the party chose topics like unemployment and migration, which affect ordinary people deeply. He went on to say that Bihar has four major categories of voters — those who choose candidates based on caste, those who choose based on religion, those who vote for the NDA out of fear of Lalu Yadav’s return, and those who vote for the opposition out of fear of the BJP. Kishor believes Jan Suraj was able to influence the first two categories to some extent but failed to convince the latter two.
Despite the disappointment, Kishor insists that there is no question of stepping back from politics. He compared his situation to the early days of the BJP, which once had only two MPs, yet later became the biggest political force in the country. He said that his party did not spread hatred or division during the campaign and will continue to fight with the same values. Kishor added that he has already spent 10 years working in Bihar and will continue to do so with the same dedication, regardless of difficulties.
Kishor also spoke openly about the party’s low vote share. He admitted that he expected Jan Suraj to get at least 12–15% of the votes but ended up receiving only about 3.5%. According to him, he took a big gamble without carrying out election surveys, and now the result is forcing him to rethink and analyse what went wrong. When asked about his earlier claim that Nitish Kumar’s JDU would not win more than 25 seats, Kishor said that although the JDU won 85 seats, a major reason behind this surprise victory was the self-employment assistance of Rs 10,000 given to 1.2 crore women just before the polls. He claimed that more than Rs 100 crore was spent in each of the 243 constituencies, which changed voter sentiment.
Even after the setback, Kishor’s message remains clear: he is not quitting. He believes that the journey of Jan Suraj has only started and that success will come with time and continuous effort. For now, he says the defeat hurts, but his determination to fight for Bihar is stronger than ever
