Prashant Kishor, a former political strategist now a politician, started his political party, the Jan Suraaj Party, in Patna on Wednesday, with many famous people there to see it. Before the start, he asked the people there to shout the “Jai Bihar” phrase in states where people are being abused and beaten.
“You all need to say ‘Jai Bihar’ so loud that no one calls you and your children ‘Bihari’, and it feels like abuse. Your voice must reach Delhi. It must reach Bengal, where students from Bihar were beaten. It must reach Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and Bombay, wherever Bihari children were abused and beaten,” Kishor said. A few days before, he said two people had been caught bothering two young people who had come to Siliguri, Bengal, to take a test. As a program, Kishor talked with thousands of people from Bihar to learn about their issues. This is how Jan Suraaj got its start.
“At the beginning of the Jan Suraaj campaign, it was said that an important aim of this is to end the political helplessness under which in the last 25-30 years people voted for the BJP out of fear for Lalu Prasad due to the lack of any alternative. For this, the people of Bihar need to form a better alternative…That alternative should be a party of all the people of Bihar who want to form this together,” he told ANI on September 30.
This article explains in detail what the Jan Suraaj Party is and what it stands for. Continue Reading.
What is Jan Suraaj Party?
The Jan Suraaj Party is a political party in Bihar, India that started on October 2, 2024, by Kishor, a political strategist who became a politician. There was a community effort to change Bihar’s social and political situation, as it is one of the least developed states.
During the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections, the Jan Suraaj Party plans to contest all 243 seats, which will challenge the current political system. Part of the party’s plan is to get support from all walks of life and promote a concept of healthy growth that benefits everyone. In talks, Kishore said he would change the liquor laws in Bihar to make alcohol legal. He also said he would create business opportunities to help the state grow and create more jobs.
Plans
The campaign’s main goal is to get people involved at the local level to deal with important problems like health, education, and jobs. He further said, “Education and employment will be our top priority. One may ask from where we will get the money to do this. If we are voted to power, we will lift the liquor ban within an hour. We need an estimated Rs 5 lakh crore to overhaul the education system in 10 years. By lifting the liquor ban, we can get Rs 20,000 crore annually from excise tax alone. That can be directly used to transform the education sector.”According to him, people should vote for their children’s employment and education rather than giving in to the influence of misinformed politicians.
“The party is being formed; in February and March 2025, we will release the party’s agenda. The blueprint and vision for Bihar will be launched. These are important steps. My dream is not to form the party and win the elections but to make the Bihar state that the people from Jharkhand, Haryana, come here and work here. This is my dream and we are working towards that,” he said.
Kishor said the state does not need “empty slogans of special status”. He added, “We will compel banks to make available to the state capital in proportion to savings deposited by its people. Last year (2023-24), banks in Bihar got Rs 4.61 lakh crore deposits, of which they gave only Rs 1.61 lakh crore in loans. It is a very poor credit-to-deposit ratio. If the ratio in Bihar is raised to 70%, we will get Rs 2.5 lakh crore as loan to do business.”
In response to the Jan Suraj party’s formation, Bihar minister Ashok Chaudhary jibed at Kishor, referring to him as someone who supports Mahatma Gandhi’s principles yet makes judgments that go against them.
“As far as we know, Prashant Kishor has been managing political parties till date, but unfortunately, he did not get a second chance in the parties he managed…Today his expansionist soul has awakened which wants to do politics… He has named (the party) ‘Jan-Suraj’… A person who believes in the policies and actions of Mahatma Gandhi but takes decisions against his policies. This shows how much he believes in the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi,” Ashok Chaudhary said.
Moreover, Kishor stated on Wednesday that he will not assume a leadership role. Earlier, he said that Jan Suraaj’s president would be chosen from different social groups every other year. The first president would be a Dalit. The second would come from either the Muslim community or an Extremely Backward Class (EBC) group. The third would come from the Other Backward Class (OBC) group, and the fourth would come from the general category. “The idea is to give representation to all sections in the five-year electoral term,” he said.
Who is Manoj Bharti?
Bharti is a member of the Dalit caste and hails from Madhubani. He got his bachelor’s degree from IIT Kanpur and master’s from IIT Delhi. Moreover, He was an IFS officer from the class of 1988 and was India’s representative in places like Indonesia, Ukraine, and Belarus. “He was not chosen as the party’s working president not because he is a Dalit but because he is a talented and deserving person who happens to be a Dalit,” said Kishor. “One can see such talented people from different social groups holding key party positions in the future.”
Jan Suraaj is different from other political groups because it discusses proportional representation in its business. “We will go by the latest caste survey. As EBCs comprise 36% of the population, talented and deserving people from this segment will get as much representation. ‘Jiski jitni aabadi, uski utni hissedari (representation in proportion to population)’ is our tagline. Some people will say that I am also discussing caste. No, I am talking about taking along all and drawing the best from all social groups in the true spirit of equality,” said Kishor.
According to Kishor, the party’s followers included leftists, communists, Muslims, and people who used to work for the RSS. “So what is our ideology? It is human first, something that Mahatma Gandhi and B R Ambedkar talked about,” he said. The new party would have pictures of Gandhi and Ambedkar on its logo. Kishor also noted that an application would be sent to the Election Commission.
Some well-known people who joined the party on Wednesday are former MPs Devendra Prasad Yadav and Monazir Hasan, Rambali Chandravanshi, an academic and former MLC, Anand Mishra, K.C. Sinha, an academic and former Vice-Chancellor of Nalanda Open University, lawyer Y.V. Giri, S.K. Paswan, a heart surgeon named Dr. Ajit Pradhan, and Durga Prasad Singh, a former MLA.
What is coming next?
Kishor has said that he wants to go to every village in Bihar to teach the people there how to improve their lives and those of their children. He wants to encourage them not to vote because of pressure from bad leaders but to work for the state’s progress in education, agriculture, and jobs. He said that the next step in his plan is to outline ways to solve Bihar’s problems.