Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) founder Prashant Kishor celebrates with party workers during a victory march as he takes the lead in the Bankipur assembly by-election result in Patna on August 3, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Aftab Alam Siddiqui/ANI
Two factors make the defeat of the BJP in the Bankipur Assembly seat surprising. First, this is not any normal Assembly constituency; this fully urban seat has been a BJP stronghold, and the party has won successive elections from here without a break. Secondly, normally it is the ruling party that is a favourite of voters in most byelections. Going by both parameters, the BJP should have registered its 10th victory in Bankipur, but instead the Jan Suraaj Party’s (JSP) founder-leader Prashant Kishor turned the tables.
It is not that ruling parties do not lose by-elections, they sometime do, but what should be a matter of concern for the BJP is the massive decline in its vote share. After nine successive victories and polling more than 60 per cent of votes in most of these, it vote share fell to 34.4 per cent this time. It is more a victory for Prashant Kishor than for his new party, since the JSP could not make any electoral impact even a year ago in the Bihar Assembly election, drawing a blank and polling just 3.5 per cent votes.
Interestingly, even in the Manjalpur Assembly seat in Gujarat, where the BJP won with a massive 67.1 per cent of votes, its vote share declined by nearly 8 per cent compared to the Assembly election held in 2022 when it polled 75.8 per cent votes.
In Madhya Pradesh’s Datia seat, the BJP received another setback, with the Congress candidate Ghanshyam Singh defeating its candidate Ashutosh Tiwari by a margin of 4 per cent. The Datia defeat is not as such a setback for the BJP in the sense that the seat was earlier held by the Congress, which managed to retain its seat. But Bankipur is a major loss.
In the last five years, in all byelections, the ruling parties have won 78 per cent of the elections, with the opposition party’s win rate being only 22 per cent. In the previous byelections held for seven Assembly seats in 2026, all seven were won by the ruling party/alliance, five by the BJP/NDA and two by the Congress in Karnataka. In 2025, byelections were held for 15 Assembly seats, of which ruling parties/coalition registered victories in nine while opposition candidates registered victories in six. Similarly in 2024, byelections were held for 86 Assembly seats of which 69 were won by the ruling party/coalition and only 17 by the opposition candidate. Overall, therefore, the ruling party/coalition has always had a better chance of winning byelections, understandably as voters want to elect the candidate who can get their work done more easily, hence candidates from the ruling party being their best bet.
The Bankipur defeat raises a few questions. The BJP has held this seat since 1995, first represented by Nabin Kishore Prasad Sinha till 2006 and then by his son Nitin Nabin since 2006, when he was elected in the byelection necessitated by his father’s death. Nitin Nabin, who has won five times in a row, polled a record 82 per cent votes in the 2006 byelection and continued to poll more than 60 per cent of votes in all subsequent elections, with 2020 being the only exception when he polled 59.05 per cent votes.
Despite the promise of Double Engine government in Bihar (now stronger with a BJP Chief Minister), which claims to guarantee faster development, why did the voters in this BJP constituency vote against it? Secondly, how did its support base decline by more than 28 per cent? In Datia, did the BJP miscalculate by refusing a ticket to senior leader Narattom Mishra? Who are the voters who shifted away from the BJP? Did young voters, present in large numbers in Bankipur, vote against the BJP?
The answers are not easy, and the party will need to do some introspection on the results. And the party will, because it takes all elections seriously.
Sanjay Kumar is a professor and an election analyst. Views expressed are personal.
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