Congress facing 'impending rout' in Gujarat and Himachal, predicts Prashant Kishor

PTI

Patna, May 20

Political strategist Prashant Kishor on Friday asserted that the Congress was facing an “impending electoral rout” in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, states ruled by the BJP where assembly polls are due later this year.

The I-PAC founder, whose proposed induction into the Congress for reviving the grand old party proved to be a non-starter, also expressed the view that the recent ‘chintan shivir’ could not achieve “anything meaningful”.

“I have been repeatedly asked to comment on the outcome of #UdaipurChintanShivir...in my view, it failed to achieve anything meaningful other than prolonging the status quo and giving some time to the Congress leadership, at least till the impending electoral rout in Gujarat and HP!” Kishor tweeted.

Kishor, whose much-publicised blueprint for reviving the Congress turned out to be a non-starter, has since launched a political movement ‘Jan Suraaj’, aimed at transforming the politics in his home state of Bihar.

The I-PAC founder, who shot to fame after handling the tremendously successful election campaign of Narendra Modi in 2014, had previously worked with the Congress in 2017 in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

While in UP, where Kishor complained that his advice was never heeded, the Congress came a cropper, in Punjab the party wrested power from the Akali Dal-BJP combine under the leadership of Amarinder Singh, who quit the party at the end of his chief ministerial tenure.

Kishor’s impressive clientele includes, most notably, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who trounced the BJP in a high-voltage assembly election held last year.

In Bihar, he had in 2015 helped the alliance of archrivals Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad, which included Congress as a junior partner, win a handsome victory in assembly polls that had dealt a heavy blow to the image of invincibility the BJP-led NDA had come to enjoy following the Lok Sabha polls a year earlier.

Kishor was later inducted by Nitish Kumar into JD(U) and elevated as national vice president, only to be sacked in the thick of the CAA-NPR-NRC controversy when the former strategist’s strident stance put the party, now back with the NDA, in a tight spot.