PATNA, July 8 -- The BJP on Tuesday named Abhishek Kumar, a youth leader and first-time electoral candidate, as its nominee for the July 30 Bankipur assembly by-election. The party's central election committee approved his candidature, BJP national general secretary Arun Singh said in a statement issued from the party's central office in New Delhi. Considered a close associate of BJP national president Nitin Nabin, whose election to Rajya Sabha in April necessitated the bypoll, Kumar currently serves as vice-president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM). He has previously been president of the BJYM Patna Mahanagar unit and has twice served as a 'mandal president'. He has also held organisational responsibilities as 'mandal minister' and 'mandal general secretary' and is an active social and political worker associated with the Kayastha community. Kumar will face Jan Suraaj founder Prashant Kishor and RJD nominee Rekha Gupta, who had unsuccessfully contested the seat in the 2025 assembly election. Bankipur, formerly known as Patna West before the 2008 delimitation, has remained a BJP bastion for more than three decades. The late Naveen Kishore Prasad Sinha, Nabin's father, first won from the constituency in 1995. Following his death in 2005, Nabin won the 2006 by-election and retained the seat for nearly two decades until his elevation to the Rajya Sabha in April....