As Prashant Kishor launches Jan Suraaj Party, a look at his 5-point agenda to transform Bihar

According to the poll strategist, the new party’s other priorities are pensions for elders, soft loans to women, and land reforms.

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 out 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.”

He alleged that banks in Bihar were investing in other states. “It is precisely the reason our people have been working as labourers in other states.”

On the other priorities of the new party, Kishor said, “To ensure that our elders live with dignity, the government will give Rs 2,000 monthly pension to each. This will cost Rs 6,000 crore annually and will be set apart from the annual Budget … We will also ensure loans to women entrepreneurs at 4% annual interest. The government will take the load of another 6% interest.”

The Jan Suraaj founder targeted the Nitish Kumar government over a land survey that has been on hold for three months. “We need land reforms and new ways of earning from cash crops. Land survey will only make siblings and relatives fight one another. It is beset with corruption,” said Kishor.

According to the poll strategist, the party’s candidates for the 2025 Bihar Assembly polls will be announced in March. “We will emulate the method followed in the USA, where people, not a team of senior leaders, choose the party’s nominee six months before the elections. The Nominated candidates will go to their respective constituencies with the party’s policies and plans,” he said.

“We will also bring in the right to recall,” Kishor told the crowd. “This will ensure that non-performing elected representatives cannot, upon victory, start taking it easy believing that they can enjoy the perks of their office for five years. If people get fed up mid-term, they will be recalled by their electors.”

On Thursday, the party will name a committee that will make decisions on policy issues.

Who is Manoj Bharti?

Kishor on Wednesday reiterated that he would not take up any leadership position. Earlier, he had explained that Jan Suraaj’s president would be chosen from various social groups on a rotational basis for a one-year term, with the first president a Dalit, the second either from an Extremely Backward Class (EBC) group or from the Muslim community, followed by a candidate from the Other Backward Class (OBC) category, and then from the general category. “The idea is to give representation to all sections in the five-year electoral term,” he had said.

Bharti who is from Madhubani belongs to a Dalit community. He completed his graduation from IIT Kanpur and received his Master’s degree from IIT Delhi. A 1988-batch IFS officer, he served as India’s envoy to countries such as 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.”

What sets Jan Suraaj apart from mainstream political parties is that it talks of proportional representation in its organisational set-up. “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.

On the party’s ideology, Kishor said socialists, Communists, Muslims, and former RSS workers were among its followers. “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 both Gandhi and Ambedkar on its emblem and an application would be sent to the Election Commission, Kishor added.

Some of the eminent public figures who joined the party on Wednesday are former MPs Devendra Prasad Yadav and Monazir Hasan, former MLC and academic Rambali Chandravanshi, former IAS officer Anand Mishra, academic and former Nalanda Open University’s Vice-Chancellor K C Sinha, lawyer Y V Giri, former IPS officer S K Paswan, cardiac surgeon Dr Ajit Pradhan, and former MLA Durga Prasad Singh.

— With PTI inputs