Could paper leak allegations prove to be Prashant Kishor’s launchpad into Bihari politics?

“The matter started from Gandhi Maidan and it will be settled there.”

That is what political strategist-turned politician Prashant Kishor declared at a press conference in Patna late on Monday, after a day that had started with the Patna Police detaining him from the city’s historic Gandhi Maidan, where he had been sitting on an indefinite hunger strike.

He had begun his protest on January 2 in solidarity with job aspirants who have alleged malpractices in the Bihar Public Service Commission examination held in December.

Shortly after he was arrested, a Patna court set Kishor’s bail at Rs 25,000. Kishor refused to pay, choosing instead to go to jail for two weeks. Hours later, he was granted unconditional bail and announced at the press conference that he would continue his fast.

With the elections to the Bihar Assembly scheduled for later this year, political observers in the state told Scroll that Kishor’s actions were aimed at generating momentum for the Jan Suraaj Party that he launched last year.

By tapping into the anger of job aspirants, Kishor is trying to reach out to young Biharis, a constituency that the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Tejashwi Yadav, the leader of Opposition in the state, views as his support base.

What is the BPSC row all about?

The Bihar Public Service Commission prelims examination for 2,035 administrative jobs was held on December 13. The first signs of trouble emerged even before the exams were even conducted. On December 6, hundreds of aspirants gathered outside the BPSC office in Patna demanding a written assurance that the scores would not be normalised.

If exams are conducted in more than one session, candidates at each shift are usually given different papers, to ensure that questions do not become public knowledge. To ensure that candidates who have answered papers that may have been considered to be less difficult, a formula is applied to “normalise” scores across sessions. But this process, candidates in Bihar alleged, held out the scope for corruption.

The protesters demanded that the BPSC exam be conducted in a single shift. The BPSC eventually gave them a written assurance that the normalisation process would not be followed, but not before the police had lathi charged the protestors.

Even as this dispute was resolved, another one emerged on the day of the exam: this time over a delay in distributing question papers at a centre in Patna.

Mithilesh Kumar, an aspirant who appeared for the exam there, told Scroll that the test was supposed to begin at noon, but question papers were not distributed until 12.30 pm. “The invigilator kept saying that question papers would soon be given, but many students walked out of the centre shouting slogans against the BPSC,” Kumar said.

As students waited outside the venue, rumours started to circulate that the question paper had been leaked, Kumar said. However, the Patna district magistrate denied this. The official claimed the delay was due to a shortage of question papers.

The exam was eventually conducted amid a ruckus. The protests outside the venue escalated after the district magistrate slapped an aspirant. Kumar told Scroll that around 500 aspirants boycotted the exam. The police also filed two first information reports in which 200 persons were accused of causing public unrest.

On December 16, the BPSC ordered a re-test for all candidates who had appeared at this centre. But by then, the unrest had spread. “Candidates from almost 30 centres across the state started making allegations of paper leak, delay in distributing question papers and centres not having CCTV cameras,” explained Patna-based journalist Santosh Singh.

On December 18, hundreds of aspirants picketed the BPSC office in Patna. They demanded a re-test at all centres and that the FIRs registered on December 13 be cancelled.

How did Prashant Kishor enter the scene?

Kishor was not the first politician to meet with the protestors. Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav spoke to the students on December 21 and wrote to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar demanding that the exam be conducted afresh.

It was only after a BPSC aspirant died by suicide on December 24 to protest the situation that Kishor entered the fray. On December 29, Kishor addressed thousands of aspirants at an event called the “Youth Congress Samvad” near Gandhi Maidan. After the event, Kishor and the protestors marched towards the chief minister's residence.

The police used water canons and batons to stop them. Though Kishor was unhurt, many protestors were left injured.

On December 30, Jan Suraaj Party leader RK Mishra led a delegation of aspirants to meet the Bihar chief secretary to demand a full retest.

On January 2, Kishor went a step further and announced that he would fast until the demands of the aspirants are met.

PK’s political play

After Kishor addressed protestors at the Gandhi Maidan on December 29, Tejashwi Yadav said that the former political strategist was acting as the state government’s “B-team”. He said that Kishor misled the protestors by making Gandhi Maidan the site of the protest instead of the BPSC office where the sit-in had started. Such agitations are not allowed at Gandhi Maidan, which is why Kishor was arrested.

But will Kishor’s actions actually translate into hard political gains? Experts are uncertain. “At the end of all this, if the re-test does not take place, the students will see Kishor as someone who tried to hijack their movement,” said Pushpendra.

Journalist Manoj Mukul, who covers Bihar for a national news channel, agreed. He said that the protests have largely been held in Patna but if Kishor hopes to make political gains, he would need to reach out to the wider Bihari youth.

“Unemployment and paper leaks are issues that are relevant to a large section of Bihar,” Mukul said. “But to make a protest in Gandhi Maidan resonate with a job aspirant in Seemanchal [Bihar’s region bordering West Bengal], one needs a robust party network, which Kishor lacks.”

However, Mukul added that if Kishor makes any gains from the BPSC agitation, so too will the Bharatiya Janata Party. In addition to eroding some of Yadav’s support base among Bihari youth, Kishor could also help the BJP keep alliance partner Nitish Kumar under pressure.

“I think the anger against the government on this issue will translate into anti-Nitish votes,” Mukul said. “The BJP supporter in Bihar votes on Hindutva, not governance, so it will not face much loss. But if Nitish loses popularity, it would help the BJP keep him under pressure after the polls.”