Prashant Kishor Takes Oath as Bankipur MLA, Emphasizes Responsibility to Serve Bihar

Jan Suraaj party founder Prashant Kishor took oath as Bankipur MLA at the Bihar Legislative Assembly in the presence of Speaker Prem Kumar on Monday. Talking to reporters after taking the oath, he said, "To be a member of the House in which people like Krishna Sinha, Karpoori Thakur, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Kedar Pandey, Ram Vilas Paswan, and Sushil Kumar Modi served, is a matter of pride for me." He said it was also "a big responsibility" for him to work on the lines of "hundreds of MLAs who dedicated the valuable years of their lives to the betterment of society and the state". Kishor made a historic electoral debut on August 3, winning the bypoll for Bihar's prestigious Bankipur assembly constituency and dealing a big blow to the BJP, which had held the seat for three decades. Bagging 64,151 votes, he defeated the BJP's Neeraj Kumar by a margin of 19,324 votes. Kumar garnered 44,827 votes. The by-poll was necessitated after BJP national president Nitin Nabin vacated the seat following his election to the Rajya Sabha. Bankipur had remained a BJP bastion for three decades, with Nabin and his late father Navin Chandra Sinha representing the constituency continuously since 1995.