Is Prashant Kishor the Karl Rove of Indian Politics?

New Delhi

Mamata, Tarun reach out to Prashant

[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]P[/dropcap]rashant Kishor, the man who strategised the poll campaign of the Grand Alliance in Bihar, is wanted by West Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her Assam counterpart Tarun Gogoi to bring them back to power in the next year’s assembly elections.
Sources said while Mamata has already requested Prashant to pilot her poll campaign including social media management, Congress leaders from Assam on Monday spoke to some senior Janata Dal (U) leaders in Patna to understand Prashant’s style of functioning, his team, and his requirements.
It’s not yet clear if Prashant is ready to oblige either of them since he may be an integral part of `Team Nitish’ in projecting the Bihar Chief Minister as the face of the combined Opposition against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Unlike Modi, who dumped him after Lok Sabha polls, Nitish does not want to let go off this wily Brahmin from Buxar, who keeps a low profile and remains out of the media glare.
Prashant heads a team of nearly 175 researchers who camped in Bihar for well over three months. His team gave vital inputs and feedbacks to Nitish Kumar in deciding candidate, shaping up campaign strategy, and managing social media affairs of the Grand Alliance and its leaders.
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]P[/dropcap]rashant stayed at Nitish Kumar’s residence in Patna, from where he monitored the entire elections, kept any eye on Prime Minister’s campaign blitzkrieg, and drafted Nitish Kumar’s responses to Modi’s attacks. His team members also gauged the response of the people who attended Modi’s rallies and concluded that the crowd was not going to translate into votes.
Team Prashant also did micro management at constituency level. They distributed handbills by the thousands to send a particular message among the voters. Prashant also provided feedback to the alliance leaders in preparing their speeches.
For Prashant, defeating Narendra Modi was as much an ego issue as it was for Nitish Kumar. Prashant had not forgotten how Modi dumped him after the Lok sabha election, ignoring years of his hard work in creating ‘Brand” Modi. Prashant spent weeks in scripting Modi’s defeat in Bihar and was confident throughout that the Grand Alliance would score a big win.
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]S[/dropcap]ources close to Prashant say that on the basis of feedbacks received from his team members, Prashant had conveyed to Nitish Kumar that the Grand Alliance would score a massive victory and the BJP-led NDA had no chance in the election. After the result vindicated his calculations, Nitish Kumar expressed his gratitude to Prashant and, in a rare gesture, walked hand in hand with him before TV cameras. That’s was the first time when people in Bihar got a glimpse of this Chanakya from Buxar.
Now that Prashant has proved that he is the best poll manager in the country, politicians are queuing up before him to chart their fortunes. With Nitish Kumar equally keen to retain his services, Prashant may have to divide his between Bihar and Bengal in the months to come.