Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party Names 5 Candidates For Bihar MLC Polls

Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor announced five candidates for Bihar Legislative Council constituencies on Sunday, with the polls likely to be notified soon. Elections are due for eight seats in all four graduates' constituencies and four teachers' constituencies, whose terms expire in November, as per PTI.

Kishor made the announcement at a press conference. He also said the remaining three seats would be announced in the next three to four days.

Among the five is Afaq Ahmed, who will seek re-election from the Saran teachers' constituency. Ahmed had won the seat six years ago with Kishor's support, before Kishor floated Jan Suraaj.

Five Candidates Named

The other nominees are Divya Jyoti from Patna teachers' constituency, S.P. Rai from Darbhanga teachers' constituency, Ravindra Yadav from the Darbhanga graduates' seat and Rajnish Ranjan from the Kosi graduates' constituency.

Lawyer and academician-turned-politician Divya Jyoti joined the party last week. She has been fielded in Patna teachers' constituency, which is currently held by JD(U) chief spokesperson Neeraj Kumar.

Teachers' Demands

Kishor said JSP would try to bring together various teachers' organisations and form a joint struggle committee to pursue their demands.

He said the party would campaign for three key demands, implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations for teachers, bringing educators from aided institutions into the regular teachers' category and setting norms for assigning non-academic duties to teachers.

Kishor said these would be treated as Jan Suraaj demands and the party would work with teachers to pressurise the government to fulfil them before the next Lok Sabha elections.

Graduate Voter Promise

Addressing graduate constituency voters, Kishor also promised that if JSP candidates win, 10,000 jobs would be facilitated for unemployed graduates in each graduate constituency.

He linked it to a job-related promise he had made to educated unemployed voters in his Bankipur constituency. Kishor is MLA from Bankipur Assembly seat.

The council election is separate from the Bihar Assembly polls. It will cover four graduates' and four teachers' constituencies across around 30 districts. JSP had earlier said it would contest all eight seats as part of its organisational expansion strategy.

In these polls, local influence, standing among graduate and teacher voters and the strength of party organisations are expected to shape the contest.