Prashant Kishor to draw blank? JSP, projected to pull a flop show, loses its only 2 leads

JSP Chanpatia and Kargahar candidates Tripurari Kumar Tiwari and Ritesh Ranjan were initially leading but later lost their leads.

Initially appearing to defy exit poll results which predicted a flop show for Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party (JSP), political analysts outfit lost its only two leads as counting of votes for the Bihar assembly elections 2025 remained on Friday.

Jan Suraaj leader Prashant Kishor after casting a vote during the second and final phase of the Bihar Assembly elections.(PTI)

Early Bihar election counting trends, provided by Pvalue, showed debutant JSP leading in two seats - Chainpur and Kargahar - till a few hours of counting. They later lost their leads.

The JSP was being seen as a 'kingmaker', but most exit polls on Tuesday said the party is projected to draw blank in the crucial Bihar assembly election 2025, in which the main contenders are the NDA and the Mahagathbandhan.

Follow Bihar election results live updates here.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) began the counting of votes at 8 am, starting with postal ballots and then heading over to EVM votes.

Bihar election results

Early trends at 9:30 am as per Pvalue showed that the BJP was ahead in 77 seats, JD(U) in 64 seats, giving an edge to the NDA. Meanwhile, the RJD was leading in 58 seats and the Congress in 10 seats.

Meanwhile, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI) data, the BJP and JD(U) were ahead in 25 and 18 seats, respectively. The data also showed that RJD was leading in 14 seats and Congress in 3 seats.

Exit poll projections for Jan Suraaj

Most of the exit poll predictions projected Prashant Kishor's party getting fewer than five seats in Bihar.

The Peoples Pulse predicted 0-5 seats for Jan Suraaj Party, while the People's Insight has given it 0-2 seats. The Matrize predicted 0-2 seats for the party, the JVC a maximum of one seat, and Dainik Bhaskar a maximum of three seats.

Jan Suraaj, which contested all 243 seats in the Bihar assembly elections, portrayed itself as a third alternative in the state politics, dominated by the two rival camps.