PATNA: Prashant Kishor, poll strategist turned politician whose Jan Suraaj Party is contesting the Bihar Assembly polls, has his name enrolled in the voter lists of two states – West Bengal and Bihar.
According to reports, 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.
Attempt to contact Kishor to get his reaction over duplicity of voter proved futile. However, 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.
Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) is contesting all the 243 seats in the Bihar assembly election. Initially, it was expected that Kishor would contest from the Kargahar assembly seat. But later he expressed his wish to contest from Raghopur against Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav. Later he suddenly dropped the idea of contesting election.
When asked about his decision not to contest election, Kishor clarified that it was the unanimous decision of the party not to contest election in the larger interest of the candidates. “Now I will focus more on strengthening the party’s support base and ensure victory of candidates in the election,” he added.
Duplicity of voter is not an isolated case. Earlier, Bihar former deputy chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and deputy chief minister Vijay Kumar Sinha were enrolled in Patna as well as their respective assembly constituencies. Tejashwi is contesting from Raghopur, Sinha is seeking his reelection from Lakhisarai.
