A s long shadows of the dusk descended on a sprawling Sheikhpura house in Patna on 6 November, the day Bihar voted in the first phase, the mood in a large room with TV sets was sombre. It belonged to Uday Singh, an ex-Purnia MP. It’s the headquarters of Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party (JSP). Singh is its first national president. TV channels were flashing around 55 per cent voter turnout by then and that dampened the mood here. If the turnout was to be low, that would mean the failure of Prashant Kishor’s three-year long ‘crusade’ to awaken and galvanise the people, especially migrants and their families.

About 7.2 per cent of the estimated Bihar population of 13 crore people are migrants — around 93 lakh. As per PK’s assessment, about 50 lakh migrants visited their native places du

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