'Rs 10,000 Cash Handout Swayed Votes', Claims Prashant Kishor After Bihar Elections 2025 Debacle

Jan Suraaj Party chief Prashant Kishor on Wednesday blamed the offer of Rs 10,000 each to 1.21 crore women in Bihar, which was given ahead of the two-phase election in November, to "buy" their votes ensuring a landslide win for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal (United) JD(U).

In the Bihar Elections Results, the Jan Suraaj Party started strongly, leading in four seats but started trailing as the rounds progressed. The party ended with zero wins and a vote share below 4%.

Speaking to NDTV's Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal for his first interview after the Bihar debacle, Kishor said that the money distributed just before the elections had a major impact on the voting.

He said, "Rs 10,000 was enough to sway votes. In a state where people don’t even earn Rs 100, Rs 10,000 is a big amount. If there are three women in a family, they got Rs 30,000 and if you suddenly get so much stash, why will they not vote for you? I am not saying that result was only because of buying of votes, but this money played a major part in garnering votes for NDA."

An agitated Kishor stated that not only Rs 10,000 was given to 1.21 crore women in Bihar, but the voters were also told that this was the first installment as an advance.

They were promised that when the NDA comes to power and Nitish Kumar becomes the Chief Minister, they would receive Rs 2 lakh for self-employment.

To convert this messaging into votes, around two lakh Jeevika didis, anganwadi sewikas and other government workers were given money in the range of Rs 10,000 to Rs 30,000 as a one-time payment and through these, 1.21 crore women were disbursed the payment.

Kishor also claimed the JD(U) distributed Rs 100 to Rs 125 crore per constituency which led to them win 85 seats where they shouldn't have gotten more than 25 seats.

"I firmly believe this... the JDU shouldn't have won more than 25 seats. But now they have 'won' 80+, people are telling me 'your analysis was wrong'. It looks wrong on the surface... but, if you look closely, one of the factors is that the government gave Rs 100 to Rs 125 crore to the public (just before voting)...," he said.

Responding to a point about the money being part of a government welfare scheme, like those in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Kishor questioned the timing of the funds being released.

He told NDTV, "Yes, some may say a government runs schemes like this in many states but in this case, this money was given from the day the manifesto was released to the day the election happened." The Jan Suraaj leader labelled this action constitutes a clear and deliberate breach of the Moral Code of Conduct (MCC) provisions.