Bankipur Byelection: Prashant Kishor Alleges Detention of Supporters as Voting Begins

Polling for the Bankipur Assembly byelection in Bihar began at 7 a.m. on Thursday amid tight security arrangements, officials said. Around 3.80 lakh voters are eligible to decide the fate of 26 candidates, including Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor, who is making his electoral debut.

Voting will continue until 6 p.m., according to a senior official at the office of the State Chief Electoral Officer. Counting of votes is scheduled for August 3.

The byelection has drawn national attention as Mr. Kishor, a former poll strategist, contests for the first time in a constituency that has been a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stronghold. The seat fell vacant after BJP national president Nitin Nabin was elected to the Rajya Sabha in April. Nabin had won the Assembly seat for the fifth consecutive time in November last year, defeating his nearest rival Rekha Gupta of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) by over 50,000 votes.

The BJP has fielded youth wing leader Neeraj Kumar Sinha. The party has not lost the seat since 1995, when the constituency was known as Patna West. According to Election Commission data, all 422 polling booths in the constituency are located in urban areas.

In the early hours of Thursday, Mr. Kishor alleged that the Bihar Police had picked up many of his supporters at the behest of the ruling BJP, which he claimed “fears losing the bypoll.” Speaking to reporters outside Patna’s Jakkanpur police station, he said, “I have been camping here for the past few hours, and the police is unable to divulge the whereabouts of more than 16 of my supporters who have been rounded up.”

Mr. Kishor added, “I am not describing these as arrests since there is no record of which of my people have been named in which case. I came to this police station after learning that they had been kept at the Jakkanpur police station. But here I am told that they have all been taken to different police stations. The SHO here even claims that the police station was not involved in the detentions, which were carried out at the instance of higher-ups.”

He further alleged that this “misuse of administrative machinery” cannot ensure the victory of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which he said roped in “almost all 201 of its MLAs” for the campaign.

Police officials were not immediately available for comment on Mr. Kishor’s allegations.