By the time the twenty-fourth round of counting concluded in the Bankipur assembly bypoll on Monday, the numbers were no longer merely charting the progress of another election. They were quietly rewriting one of the most enduring narratives in contemporary Indian politics.
Prashant Kishor, the strategist whose career has been built on interpreting electoral verdicts from behind the scenes, was on course to secure one of his own. Holding a commanding lead over the BJP's Neeraj Kumar in a constituency long regarded as among the saffron party's safest urban bastions, Kishor appeared poised to cross a political threshold that had eluded him throughout a career defined by other people's victories.
