Prashant Kishor to assist Punjab Cong in Assembly poll

New Delhi/Chandigarh, February 13

Prashant Kishor, poll strategist of Narendra Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll who later worked for Nitish Kumar in the Bihar Assembly election in 2015, will now work for the Punjab Congress in the forthcoming state elections to be held in early 2017.

Disclosing this, Punjab Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh said, “The All-India Congress Committee has given its approval for Kishor to assist the Punjab Congress in the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state”.

The Punjab Assembly elections are due early next year and the Congress, which has been out of power for the last nine years after been defeated twice at the hustings by ruling Akali-BJP combine, is seeking to wrest power again.

The Congress will work out its poll strategy jointly with Kishor in the run-up to the polls, especially in the wake of growing support for the AAP, which had won four Lok Sabha seats, sources said.

They said Amarinder has been working with Kishor for some time and he is also learnt to have told the Congress not to contest the Khadoor Sahib bypoll in the state.

The Congress has since decided not to contest the bypoll, despite the AICC having officially declared the candidature of sitting MLA Ramanjit Singh Sikki.

Sources said Kishor has already started his work and is making an assessment of the ground situation along with surveys while formulating the party’s strategy.

Kishor and the Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG), an election campaign group he conceptualised, helped the Narendra Modi-led BJP win an absolute majority in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In 2015, Kishor and some members of CAG regrouped as and started the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) and started working for the 2015 Bihar Assembly elections. Working closely with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Kishor helped Kumar’s “Grand Alliance” win the elections. — PTI