Prashant Kishor’s political gamble in Bihar faces a reality check

From famed strategist to fledgling challenger, Kishor's experiment with Jan Suraaj confronts complexities and the limits of charisma

- AJAY JHA

A s Bihar gears up to elect its 18th Legislative Assembly, the state's political cauldron is once again simmering with speculation and intrigue.

Will the ruling allianee secure yet another term, or will the opposition finally manage to wrest power? And beyond these familiar questions lies a more tantalising one-who will become Bihar's next chief minister?

The opposition Mahagathbandhan, contesting this election under the banner of INDIA, a muchtouted but ultimately floundering acronym adopted ahead of the 2024 general elections, has finally declared Tejashwi Yadav, heir to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) legacy, as its chief ministerial face. On the other side, the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) continues to hedge its bets, asserting that it is contesting under the leadership of the incumbent chief minister, Nitish Kumar-without explicitly committing that the 73year-old political veteran will indeed serve another term. Kumar already holds the distinction of being Bihar's longest-serving chief minister, and fatigue, both political and personal, has begun to show.

Yet, amid this familiar political theatre, one figure stands out as the biggest unresolved riddle of the 2025 elections-Prashant Kishor, or PK, the master strategist who once orchestrated stunning victories for others but now struggles to script one for himself. Once feted for his uncanny ability to predict seat tallies with surgical precision, PK's own political journey has taken a turn that few would have anticipated.

Kishor's prediction that his fledgling party, Jan Suraaj, would either win more than 150 seats or fewer than 10 in the 243-member Assembly sounded more like a joke than psephology. "No pollster," quipped a rival, "keeps a margin of error that wide unless he's guessing, not forecasting."