Latest news with #JanSuraajParty
New Indian Express
5 days ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
What happens in Tej Pratap's dreams?
Chirag lauds Kishor for his 'honest role' Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant kishor got an admirer from an unexpected quarter. Union Minister and LJP (RV) chief Chirag Paswan appreciated kishor's 'honest role' in Bihar politics. Paswan, who is also known as the PM's 'Hanuman', however, dismissed the allegation that Kishor was trying to 'hijack' his 'Bihar first, Bihari first' plank. Paswan said no one can hijack another's agenda. He said it's the beauty of democracy that people have many options to choose from. 'In democracy, it's better to have many options,' he quipped. Notably, Kishor misses no chance to criticize Modi for his failure to keep promises made to the people of Bihar. 'Let Tejashwi contest polls from Bangladesh' Everyone was taken by surprise when a BJP minister in the Nitish Kumar cabinet asked RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, who is also the leader of the opposition in the State Assembly, to contest elections from Bangladesh if the latter has any objection to the deletion of names of Bangladeshi infiltrators from the electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision in Bihar. The minister, Nitin Nabin, took a potshot at Tejashwi's comment on the possible boycott of elections over the SIR. 'Let him contest the election from Bangladesh,' the BJP minister said. Ramashankar Our correspondent in Bihar ramashankar@
Indian Express
6 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
FIR against Prashant Kishor, 2,000 Jan Suraaj supporters over Bihar Assembly protest
Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor, eight other leaders of the outfit and 2,000 unidentified supporters have been booked for assault, rioting and violating curfew orders amid a protest march in Patna Wednesday. Apart from Kishor, the FIR at Patna's Secretariat Police Station names Jan Suraaj's state president Manoj Bharti, spokesperson Vivek Kumar, N. P. Mandal, Kishor Kumar, Arvind Singh, Lalan Yadav, Jitendra Yadav, and YouTuber-politician Manish Kashyap. According to the FIR, authorities received information regarding Jan Suraaj's plan to gherao the Vidhan Sabha the day before the June 23 protest and barricaded all routes to the Assembly. 'Initially, party leaders and workers were expected to proceed from Sheikhpura House to Dumra Chowky via Bailey Road, onward to Income Tax Golambar and R Block. However, the group diverted from Dumra Chowky via Airport Road towards Patel Golambar. Leaders and workers of the Jan Suraaj Party, about 2,000 in number, reached near Patel Golambar via Airport Road,' says the FIR, filed on the basis of a complaint by Sanjay Kumar Mishra, a chief cooperative extension officer in the office of the assistant registrar of Cooperative Societies. It claims that although the march was meant to reach the Gardanibagh protest site via Chitkohra Bridge, it headed towards Gate No. 2 of the Patna Zoo via Taylor Road instead. 'When police tried to stop them, the crowd broke through the barricades and reached up to SSG Gate,' it says. The FIR further alleges the protestors 'began jostling and physically confronting the male and female police officers deployed there', despite being 'repeatedly informed that prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita were in force from 21 July to 25 July… in light of the Bihar Legislative Assembly session.' Protestors were allegedly instructed to head to the designated protest area at Gardanibagh and were warned of legal action for non-compliance. Despite this, 'the processionists blocked half of Taylor Road and Patel Golambar, resulting in traffic disruption for about two hours, causing significant inconvenience to the general public', the FIR adds. Jan Suraaj had decided to gherao the Assembly over three demands – disbursing Rs 2 lakh to poor families, allocation of three decimals of land to landless Dalit families, and action against alleged corruption in land surveys. According to authorities, the party had not sought permission for the protest, and that a scuffle broke out, leading the police to lathi-charge protesters. Kishor said later Wednesday that a Jan Suraaj delegation met Chief Secretary Amrit Lal Meena to formally submit a list of their demands, adding that 'the party will organise another protest, gheraoing the chief minister's residence' if the demands are not met in a week.
New Indian Express
7 days ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
JSP workers injured in alleged lathi charge as police stop march to CM Nitish's residence
PATNA: Several workers of the Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) were allegedly injured during a protest in Patna on Wednesday, after police allegedly resorted to a baton charge to stop them from marching towards the chief minister's residence. The protest, led by JSP founder Prashant Kishor, was part of a 'CM residence gherao' stir to press for a three-point charter of demands. JSP supporters who gathered there to take part in 'CM residence gherao' were stopped by police near Chitkohra Overbridge while they were heading towards the Gardanibagh dharna site. Police had erected barricades the march, leading to a scuffle between personnel and JSP protestors. Videos of the clash quickly went viral on social media. JSP later claimed that several of its supporters sustained injuries in the police action, alleging they were lathi-charged during the protest. Prashant Kishor attacked the state government for using force against peaceful demonstration and attempt to suppress the voice of the people. 'We will not allow this to happen. We will fight against them,' he said. The agitation was organised to protest, what Prashant Kishor called, 'three critical failure of the state government. Later addressing workers, Kishor raised three questions: Why have poor families not received the promised Rs.2 lakh employment aid? Why have Dalit families not been allotted three decimals of land? And why there is silence on alleged corruption in the ongoing land survey? Prashant Kishor, who met the injured supporters shortly after the incident, slammed the state government, accusing it of suppressing genuine public concerns through police force. 'They (government) think that it will impact our fight for justice. But they are under the shadow of illusion. Our fight will continue till demands are met,' he asserted. Meanwhile, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Patna, denied the lathicharge and said that the protestors were prevented from marching towards prohibited area. 'Holding agitation is completely banned in prohibited zone,' he told the media while defending police action.
India Today
23-07-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Bihari vs ‘Bahari': The election debate in Nitish land
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated July 28, 2025)Bihar, in many ways, is ground zero for post-Mandal reservation politics. Innovations on that had started back in 2013, when the Nitish Kumar government introduced a landmark policy, reserving 35 per cent of police jobs—within caste quotas and beyond—for women. By 2016, this policy was extended to all government posts in the state. Now, nearly a decade later, there's a new twist to reservation a raging debate about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and its concomitant focus on natives and outsiders, a piece of evolution has crept into that old schema of quotas that readjusts it to this new reality of electoral a quiet yet politically charged manoeuvre on July 8, the Bihar cabinet amended its flagship gender quota, restricting the 35 per cent state government jobs exclusively to women domiciled in Bihar. For the first time, aspirants from outside the state—baharis—have been formally excluded. On paper, this appears a mere tightening of bureaucratic criteria. Politically, however, the chain of cause and effect is clear. The SIR process is creating an atmosphere polarised on nativism, of the sort only occasionally seen before in Bihar. In 2015, for instance, Nitish had drummed up some passions about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'DNA remark' and framed it as a conflict between 'an outsider and me'. Today, again, the truism that only Bihar residents can vote in its elections has been granted a certain currency. So, it makes perfect sense, with just three months or so left for the assembly election, to fine-tune quota policies to catch that was indeed some goading. Jan Suraaj Party leader Prashant Kishor had mounted a persistent critique on this front, accusing Nitish of opening Bihar's job market to outsiders in pursuit of national ambitions. RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, too, had recently promised to implement a 100 per cent domicile-based policy should his party form the next government. To head them off, Nitish appears to have stepped into—or at least nodded towards—the long-simmering bahari-bhitari (outsider–insider) debate. What better way than to inaugurate this with women, a constituency Nitish has long cultivated. Especially since women are now increasingly seen as decisive in shaping the state's electoral fortunes, with a voting percentage that has consistently outgunned that of male voters by a good country mile over the last decade and a POLITICSWith the latest quota policy, Bihar has joined the ranks of states like Maharashtra and Jharkhand, where the insider-outsider divide has long featured prominently in political discourse. For years, Nitish has carefully distanced himself from the more incendiary rhetoric of his alliance partners, who frequently raised concerns about Bangladeshi infiltrators and invoked the bahari-bhitari narrative. While he never openly endorsed such language, this latest move signals a subtle yet significant restricting job reservations to domiciled Bihari women, Nitish appears to have crafted his own version of the insider-outsider paradigm—less inflammatory, perhaps, but no less exclusionary. It's a quiet deployment of weaponry he once abjured, now repurposed in the language of administrative reform. In doing so, he has stepped into a narrative he once preferred to observe from the to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
Indian Express
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Prashant Kishor's protest runs into police wall 2 kilometres from Bihar assembly
Three workers of Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party were injured as police resorted to lathi-charge to disperse a protest march outside the Bihar Legislative Assembly on Wednesday. Though Kishor, who was leading a march to the House for the first time since he founded the party in October 2024, was stopped almost two kilometres away from the Vidhan Sabha, he succeeded in making his presence felt, daring police to hit him and saying that officers had no right to use lathi charge on a peaceful demonstration. Slogans of 'Nitish Kumar hosh me aao (Nitish, come to your senses)' and 'Nitish Kumar murdabad (down with Nitish Kumar)' rang loud during the protest before it was dispersed. The week-long monsoon session of Assembly, the last session before 2025 polls, concludes this Friday. Kishor had started the protest march from his Shekhpura house along Bailey Road. The Vidhan Sabha is five kilometres away. He has been demanding that the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government fulfil its promises, such as giving Rs 2 lakh each to 94 lakh poor families, distribution of three decimal land to each Mahadalit family, and completion of the land survey. 'We are only reminding CM of his old promises,' he said. Later, JSP state president Manoj Kumar Bharti led a team to meet state chief secretary Amrit Lal Meena to put forth the party's demands. JSP has set a deadline of a week to implement its promises, failing which the party would resume the protest. Santosh Singh is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express since June 2008. He covers Bihar with main focus on politics, society and governance. Investigative and explanatory stories are also his forte. Singh has 25 years of experience in print journalism covering Bihar, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. ... Read More
