As the BJP swept the Assembly bypolls in Bihar, winning all four seats, including the RJD bastions of Belaganj and Ramgarh, poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) made its presence felt in its debut, potentially denting the prospects of the RJD in two seats despite its other two candidates forfeiting deposits.

In Belaganj, a seat which the RJD had not lost over the past 34 years, the JD(U)’s Manorama Devi defeated RJD’s Vishwanath Kumar Singh by 21,391 votes. The JSP candidate Mohammad Amjad seemingly played spoilsport here for the RJD as he pocketed over 17,000 votes. The bypoll here was necessitated after eight-time MLA Surendra Prasad Yadav was elected to the Lok Sabha.

In Imamganj too, the JSP seems to have spoiled the RJD’s chances as its candidate Jitendra Paswan secured 37,082 votes even as Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) candidate and Union Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s daughter-in-law, Deepa Kumari defeated her closest rival, Roshan Manjhi of the RJD, by a margin of 5,945 votes.

“We have secured 10% of the votes. We will keep fighting even if it takes us 10 years to ‘arrive’ as a party. Jan Suraaj is a movement and as a party, we are just a month old. We will work harder to plug the gaps and win the people’s confidence,” Kishore said.

In the closely contested seat of Ramgarh, the BJP eventually emerged victorious after its candidate Ashok Kumar Singh was given a run for his money by BSP’s Satish Kumar, who lost the bypoll by a 1,362-vote margin and emerged runner-up. The RJD, which had been synonymous with the seat held by the family former state unit president Jagnanad Singh for three decades and fielded his son Ajit, came in third. Here, the JSP candidate Sushil Kumar Singh finished fourth and forfeited his deposit.

The NDA also managed to pocket Tarari, seen to be a stronghold of the CPI (ML)L in recent times, with the BJP’s Vishal Prashant, the son of former Tarari MLA defeating the Left party’s Raju Yadav by over 10,000 votes. Here too, the JSP candidate Kiran Singh forfeited her deposit and emerged runner-up with 5,592 votes.