Nearly a month after contesting against the Mahagathbandhan in the Assembly elections in Bihar, election strategist-turned politician Prashant Kishor met senior Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra recently, according to The India Express report.
While the two sides have remained tight-lipped about the meeting, the interaction assumes significance given that Kishor, who now heads Jan Suraaj Party, had been critical of the grand old party since their bitter parting some years ago.
In the recent Bihar election, Kishor was critical of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and Rahul Gandhi’s vote theft campaign, insisting that they were not an electoral issue in the state.
The celebrated former poll strategist’s electoral outing, however, turned out to be flop show with his Jan Suraaj Party drawing a blank, with 236 (or 99.16%) of its total 238 candidates losing their deposits. The Congress too fared badly, winning just six of the 61 seats it contested, down from 19 in 2020.
How much knowledge does Rahul Gandhi have of Bihar?
But while positioning himself as a challenge to the Mahagathbandhan and the BJP-led Mahayuti in Bihar, Prashant Kishor was often seen dismissing the electoral issues raised by Rahul Gandhi.
In an exclusive interview with news agency ANI, Prashant Kishor said that Gen Z is not a “homogeneous group” who will act on Rahul Gandhi’s call, despite the LoP’s repeated “vote theft” allegations and call to the youths to safeguard the country’s democratic process.
“How much knowledge does Rahul Gandhi have here? Rahul Gandhi comes here, roams around, does a couple of show bites and then he is gone,” Prashant Kishor said.
“When the people of Bihar are not listening to him (Rahul Gandhi), then why would Gen Z listen to him? Gen Z is not a homogeneous group in Bihar who acts on someone’s call or on the basis of their assessment,” he added.
Kishor’s Uneasy Relationship with Congress
Prashant Kishor first worked closely with the Congress during the 2014 Lok Sabha election, when he was part of the party’s campaign team led by Rahul Gandhi. The campaign failed badly, but Kishor gained visibility within the party’s leadership.
Since then he has worked closely with the grand old party, strategising Congress’s Punjab assembly election campaign and ensured Captain Amarinder Singh secure a decisive victory in 2017.
But Kishor repeatedly expressed frustration with what he saw as the Congress’s lack of organisational reform, indecision, and resistance to professional advice.
Many Congress old guards were uncomfortable with an outsider strategist having access to top leadership, especially the Gandhi family.
By 2020, he stepped away from any formal role, though informal channels of communication remained open.
At a meeting in April 2022, Kishor shared a detailed presentation to the Congress’s top leadership at Sonia Gandhi’s 10, Janpath residence, after which Sonia Gandhi, the then party president, set up an ‘empowered action group’ to address the Congress’s political challenges. Kishor was then willing to join the Congress, according to The Indian Express report.
However, the talks fell through after Kishor turned down the Congress leadership’s offer to him to be part of the group.
“Following a presentation and discussions with Prashant Kishor, Congress president has constituted an Empowered Action Group 2024 & invited him to join the party as part of the group with defined responsibility. He declined. We appreciate his efforts and suggestions given to the party,” the Congress had then said in a statement.
Within minutes, Kishor hit back, saying “the party needs leadership and collective will to fix the deep-rooted structural problems through transformational reforms.”
