NEW DELHI: Prashant Kishor‘s Jan Suraaj Party lost its deposit in 236 of the 238 seats that it contested but data suggests it may have played spoiler in quite a few seats. In 35 constituencies, the party’s votes were higher than the winning margin.NDA won 19 of these seats while 14 went to Mahagathbandhan. AIMIM and BSP each won one of these seats.
Of course, the fact that Jan Suraaj got more votes than the margin in a seat does not necessarily mean it made the difference to the outcome since there is no way of knowing where those votes would otherwise have gone. The party came third in 115 seats and in one, Marhaura, it finished second.Kishor would at best be a spoiler, many of his critics had said
Of the 35 seats, within NDA, JDU, Kishor’s former party, won 10 of these seats while BJP won five. The tally was three for LJP-RV and one for RLM.In the MGB camp, RJD was the winner in nine of these seats while Congress won two. One seat each went to CPM, CPIML-L and IIP.Despite his amplified presence on the social media, many critics of the party had claimed that Prashant Kishor would at best be a spoiler. Some felt his upper caste identity meant he would cut into BJP’s vote while others argued he would divide the anti-incumbency youth votes since he was talking about issues like migration from the state.
