The district election office in Bihar's Rohtas on Tuesday issued a notice to Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor after multiple media reports suggested that his name had been registered as a voter in two states.
The poll official has directed Kishor to respond to the notice within three days.
TNIE earlier today reported that Kishor is registered as a voter in both his home state of Bihar and adjoining West Bengal.
In Bihar, Kishor is registered as a voter in the Kargahar assembly constituency under the Sasaram parliamentary constituency in Rohtas district. His polling station is Madhya Vidyalay in his ancestral village Konar.
In Bengal, Kishor's address is listed as 121 Kalighat Road, which houses the Trinamool Congress office in Bhabanipur, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s assembly constituency. His polling station is listed as St Helen School on B Ranishankari Lane. Kishor had worked with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) as a political consultant during the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections.
The notice issued by the DEO, Rohtas, has cited a media report which has pointed out the anomaly in the case of Kishor.
The notice points out that "Section 31 of Representation of People Act" prohibits a person from having his name enrolled as a voter at more than one place, and that violation of the provision was "punishable with imprisonment for one year, or fine, or both."
Speaking to TNIE, a senior leader of the Jan Suraaj Party on the condition of anonymity said that Kishor enrolled as voter in the Kargahar assembly constituency after the West Bengal elections.
“He is learnt to have applied for deletion of his name from electoral rolls in West Bengal after he enrolled in Bihar’s Kargahar assembly constituency. The status of the application for cancellation of name from West Bengal is not known to us,” the JSP leader said.
Meanwhile, the ruling NDA as well as the opposition INDIA bloc in Bihar, where Kishor's foray into electoral politics has vexed both rival formations, latched on to the opportunity.
Neeraj Kumar, MLC and spokesperson of JD(U), which is headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, told PTI, "It is amusing that Prashant Kishor, who has all his establishments in Delhi, and hails from Bihar, chose to get registered as a voter in West Bengal. Since when did becoming a poll strategist necessitate your being a voter in the state you are providing your services?"
The JD(U) leader added, "We suspect Kishor had tried to strike a deal with Banerjee, that after her victory in the 2021 polls, she would get him elected to the Rajya Sabha. To become a member of the Upper House in Parliament, he needed to be a resident of the state concerned. But the Trinamool Congress chief must have snubbed him after returning as the chief minister. So, in a sulk, he might have staged the drama of retiring from the consultancy business."
(With inputs from PTI)
