New Delhi:

A retired diplomat and IIT graduate has been named as the working president of the new political outfit Jan Suraaj Party (JSP), formed by election strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor.

Manoj Bharti, handpicked by Mr Kishor as one of the key members of the JSP, is a resident of Madhubani in Bihar and a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur (BTech) and Delhi (MTech).

Mr Kishor formally launched his political party in Patna today.

READ | Prashant Kishor Launches Party Before Bihar Polls, Vows To End Liquor Ban

Mr Bharti has been India’s ambassador to Ukraine, Belarus, Timor-Leste, and Indonesia.

In his LinkedIn profile, Mr Bharti described in brief his last posting in Indonesia, where he said he managed the visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and 13 ministers under the Group of 20 (G20) for building trust in defence, security and education cooperation.

Mr Kishor formed his political party two years after he went on a 3,000-km padayatra of Bihar, beginning from Champaran, where Mahatma Gandhi had launched the first Satyagraha. Mr Kishor has said his idea was to mobilise people for a “new political alternative” that could cure Bihar of its chronic backwardness.

At the launch event today, he said the party has been active for the last two years and recently received approval from the Election Commission.

“The Jan Suraaj campaign has been going on for two-three years. People had been asking when would we form the party. We all must thank god, today the Election Commission has officially accepted Jan Suraaj as Jan Suraaj Party,” Mr Kishor said.

He said Bihar needs at least Rs 5 lakh crore in the next 10 years if Bihar wants to have a world-class education system. He has also promised to end liquor ban in Bihar immediately if elected to power.

The Jan Suraj Party is likely to contest in all constituencies in the Bihar assembly election next year.

Patna:

Former election strategist Prashant Kishor’s long-pending entry into electoral politics came today with the formal launch of his Jan Suraaj group as a political party. The Jan Suraaj Party is expected to contest all seats of Bihar in the next assembly election. The party will be headed by Manoj Bharti, a retired officer of the Indian Foreign Service. Mr Kishor has said if elected, the party would end prohibition of liquor in the state and use the earnings to improve the education sector. 

Mr Kishor, who talks of changing the paradigm for voting — shifting it from caste and electoral sops to a vision for the future — had said who heads the party will be a decision of the people who worked for the group over the last two years. 

For more than two years, Mr Kishor has been travelling across the state, raising awareness about what he says ought to be the election agenda. 

Earlier this year, he had announced that he was ready for a formal launch as a political party. His Jan Suraaj, he had said, would offer the people a fresh alternative.

“In Bihar, in the last 25 to 30 years, people have been voting for RJD or BJP. That compulsion should end. The alternate should not belong to any dynastic party, but people who wish to form the party,” he had said.

Mr Kishor had started the Jan Suraaj initiative after a brief stint in the ruling Janata Dal United of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the Congress’s aborted effort to recruit him to revitalise the party. 

Offered a slot on the party’s “Empowered Action Group” after extensive talks in 2022, Mr Kishor had declined, with pointed remarks about the Congress’s lack of “collective will to fix deep-rooted structural problems”.

He had launched the Jan Suraaj with a yatra and says its conversion to a political party is only the halfway mark on his journey. 

Mr Kishor has said he aims to visit every village in Bihar to educate residents on improving their living standards and those of their children, encouraging people not to vote under pressure from misguided leaders and work towards the progress of the state on key parameters including education, agriculture, and employment.

The next stage of his initiative would be presenting a blueprint of solutions for the challenges Bihar is facing, he has said.