On Monday, August 3, we will get a sense of the public mood in the country, or, to be specific, in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strongholds such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar. Three Assembly seats, one in each of these States, held bypolls on July 30.

The one that all of us should watch closely is Bankipur in Bihar’s capital city, Patna. Bankipur is the heart of the heartland. The outcome in this seat will provide an indication of heartland politics in the aftermath of the student protests that recently rocked the country. The seat was vacated by Nitin Nabin, the BJP’s national president, and Jan Suraj leader Prashant Kishor is contesting from the constituency, testing his caste-free, anti-BJP politics in one of the party’s strongest forts.

Published - August 02, 2026 07:46 am IST