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Informist, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – Refusing to entertain Jan Suraaj Party's plea challenging the Bihar elections, the Supreme Court said that once the people of the state had rejected the party founded by political strategist Prashant Kishore, it had approached judicial forums for relief. "How many votes did you get? Once people reject you, you use the judicial forum to get relief! Somebody should have challenged the scheme (the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana) itself then. That is not the prayer before us. You just want the election to be declared null and void," said a bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant.

 

The apex court said that it would consider the issue of freebies in the state, but had to see the bona fide of the petitioner also. It couldn't look at the issue of freebies at the behest of a party that had just lost, the court said, adding, "When you come to power, you will do the exact thing...We can't issue a notice like this. There has to be a format of entertaining a petition. It has to be shown in an election petition that a particular candidate has been benefited and that amounts to corrupt practice."

 

The petitioner had said that there was misuse of the state welfare scheme by Janata Dal (United) President and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to influence voters ahead of the 2025 Bihar assembly elections. Under the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, launched by Kumar's government just before the elections, the state decided to transfer INR 10,000 directly to one woman in every family to help her start self-employment, with a further promise of INR 200,000 after assessment, the petitioner said. Beneficiaries were added and paid after the election schedule was announced and while the moral code of conduct was in operation, the petitioner said.

 

The political party said that releasing cash benefits during this period amounted to "corrupt practices" meant to unduly influence voters in favour of the ruling government. This deprived other political parties of a level playing field and struck at the core requirement of free and fair elections, the petitioner said. Women who were beneficiaries of the scheme were deployed at polling booths on voting days in both phases of polling, even though many of them had already received the cash benefit from the state government, the petitioner said, adding that this deployment had no rational basis and further compromised the neutrality expected during elections.

 

In the recently concluded Bihar assembly elections in 2025, the National Democratic Alliance had secured 202 out of 243 seats, with the Bharatiya Janata Party winning 89 and the Janata Dal (United) 85 seats. The Jan Suraaj Party had contested 242 of the 243 assembly seats in the polls, but failed to secure a single seat.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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