All Three Gandhis Met With Prashant Kishor For 2024 Strategy: Sources
The presence of all three Gandhis is significant. According to sources, it suggests that all three are in it together and any decision on a strategy will be unanimous.
All IndiaReported by Manish Kumar, Sreenivasan Jain, Sunil Prabhu, Edited by Deepshikha GhoshUpdated: July 13, 2021 11:50 pm IST
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Reports had earlier linked the Kishor-Gandhis' meet to Congress' turmoil in Punjab (File)
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New Delhi: Poll strategist Prashant Kishor held discussions with Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra today, reportedly on "something bigger" than upcoming state polls and with the 2024 national election in sight.
Here are the top 10 points in this big story:
Initially, it was believed that Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka were present at the meeting with Prashant Kishor, held at the Congress MP's home in Delhi this evening. Sources now say their mother, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, joined the discussions via a virtual link.
According to sources, the meeting was not about the Punjab or Uttar Pradesh polls as speculated, but about "something bigger" - an indication that Prashant Kishor might be looking at a significant role in getting the Congress battle-ready for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Reports had earlier linked the Kishor-Gandhis' meet to the Congress turmoil in Punjab, where the party is struggling to broker peace between its top two leaders - Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and his rival Navjot Singh Sidhu - ahead of next year's state polls.
The sources said this is not the first time that the ace strategist has met with the Congress's first family; the discussions raise the possibility of Mr Kishor - a transformative figure in several elections and for many regional leaders - linking up with the Congress once again after his bitter experience in the UP polls of 2017.
The presence of all three Gandhis is significant. According to sources, it suggests that all three are in it together and any decision on a strategy will be unanimous.
Mr Kishor had last collaborated with the Congress during its failed campaign for the Uttar Pradesh election in 2017. The Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance flopped and the BJP came to power.
Stung by that aberration in his impressive track record, Mr Kishor had publicly voiced his dissatisfaction with the Congress's style of functioning and its apparent stasis, something that has dogged the party in most elections since then.
Mr Kishor's two meetings with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar in quick succession fueled talk of a combined opposition strategy to take on the BJP in 2024. A meeting at Sharad Pawar's home of a front led by former BJP leader Yashwant Sinha added to the buzz. The Congress was not present in the much-bandied Rashtra Manch meet.
Both Mr Kishor and Sharad Pawar said at the time that there can be no alliance against the BJP without the Congress, the only opposition party with a pan-Indian presence.
But the strategist has, so far, ruled out his involvement in any opposition front to take on the BJP in the next general election. "I don't believe a Third or Fourth Front could emerge as a successful challenge to the current dispensation," he told NDTV. Mr Kishor believes that the 'tried and tested' Third Front model is archaic, and not suited to the current political dynamic.
Opinion: "The PK Plan" - What The Gandhis And He Have Discussed
Swati Chaturvedi
OpinionUpdated: July 14, 2021 1:51 pm IST
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After its interminable deliberations on its many leadership issues, the Congress may have a new element to add to the mix: Prashant Kishor. The 44-year-old announced on NDTV on the day that Mamata Banerjee swept Bengal that he was giving up his day job as election strategist. Now, reliable sources say that "PK" as he is known has been given three days by the Gandhis, who are at the core of the Congress, to decide on whether he will join the party not as an advisor but as a top-rung official.
PK met yesterday for four hours with the Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and their mother Sonia Gandhi.
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Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi
PK has a reputation for enjoying a challenge - his earlier gigs have involved underdogs like Jagan Mohan Reddy and in Bengal, his client Mamata Banerjee and he were up against the unmitigated might of the PM and Amit Shah. If it's a challenge he's still looking for, he's come to the right place. The Congress is top-heavy with the Gandhis - Sonia is the chief but it is son Rahul who calls the shots in an undeclared but outsized role, daughter Priyanka is in charge of the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh which votes next year - and none of them seem to have a clear handle on how to overhaul the party. A cohort of 23 Congress leaders ("the G-23" have formally asked for more effective and visible leadership; wishful thinking so far as exhibited by the Punjab crisis, where Amarinder Singh as Chief Minister is battling near-daily attacks from in-house rival Navjot Singh Sidhu, with mediation by the Gandhis and a three-member committee of the party that has yet to deliver any change. All this in a state which votes in months - and one of the few states where the Congress retains power.
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Captain Amarinder Singh with Navjot Singh Sidhu
PK was enrolled by Amarinder Singh in 2017 to help him win Punjab; he has cabinet status there. In earlier interviews, he has acknowledged that the Congress High Command's indecisiveness, as well as a scattershot approach which has seeped into all aspects of its functioning, has been tough to work with - he said this in the context of Uttar Pradesh, where he worked with Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi in the last election who allied to ward off the BJP from taking charge of the state.
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Prashant Kishor with Akhilesh Yadav
But authoritative sources tell me that PK is rather excited by the prospect of trying to regenerate the Congress - in interviews after the Bengal election, he was categorical that a serious Opposition effort to take on the BJP in the next general election cannot be expected to make any mark unless the Congress, as a national party, is central to the scheme.
It is not as if PK has not traversed from background advisor to active politician before. In Bihar, he was given cabinet minister-status by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar but that affiliation went up in flames when he was expelled from Nitish Kumar's party over a series of differences including the Chief Minister's growing dependence on the BJP as his ally.
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Prashant Kishor with Nitish Kumar
Sources say "The PK Plan" to reanimate the Congress has already been submitted by the strategist to the Gandhis. He wants to set up a nine-person brains trust with members including Raghuram Rajan, the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and industrialist Rajiv Bajaj. Rahul Gandhi's question-answer sessions conducted on social media with some of these thought leaders and experts were a dry run of this PK Plan.
The Make Congress Move Again agenda also prioritizes internal elections from the block-level upwards. With the centre dispatching investigative agencies against a series of political announcements. PK also wants the Congress to make a formal announcement that it will only take campaign donations by cheque.
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Prashant Kishor (File photo)
He has reportedly made it clear to his prospective bosses that while he will be available as their sounding board, he will ensure that the party is aware of and in sync with their strategy on key issues. But as a member of the party, PK will have to follow hierarchy - at least for public consumption - to ensure that the Congress' different leaders including those in G-23 do not feel bruised by his powerful role. PK has so far under-performed on this front in different states where his direct line to the party leader resulted in serious fissures and revolts.
PK has made it clear that he believes that the BJP can be taken down if the Opposition unites and works with far more team spirit than it has in the past. The gambit that he is considering will require him to work with a constellation of regional leaders, many of whom he has handled through earlier assignations. With the fattest call sheet on account of theses earlier jobs, PK has the gateway to his mission. The question now is whether the Congress and its First Family can help or hamstring that.
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(Swati Chaturvedi is an author and a journalist who has worked with The Indian Express, The Statesman and The Hindustan Times.)
Prashant Kishor To Join Congress? Big Hint After Meeting With Gandhis
Prashant Kishor's meeting with the Gandhis on Tuesday, sources say, was about "something bigger" - an indication that he might be looking at a significant role in getting the Congress ready for the 2024 polls.
All IndiaReported by Sreenivasan Jain, Edited by Deepshikha GhoshUpdated: July 14, 2021 1:19 pm IST
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Prashant Kishor had earlier told NDTV that he wanted to move on and was "quitting this space".
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New Delhi: A day after Prashant Kishor held discussions with Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, speculation has intensified over whether the poll strategist will join India's main opposition party.
Sources indicate the Gandhis and Prashant Kishor, during their talks, may have explored a formal role for the strategist in the party as it prepares big elections ahead, state and national.
All three Gandhis were part of the discussions with Prashant Kishor at Rahul Gandhi's residence on Tuesday. It was not the first time, according to sources.
The meeting, sources asserted, was not about the Punjab or Uttar Pradesh polls as widely speculated, but about "something bigger" - a sign that Mr Kishor might be looking at a significant role in getting the Congress ready for the 2024 election fight.
Mr Kishor, who added the April-May Bengal and Tamil Nadu elections to his impressive portfolio of poll victories, had earlier told NDTV that he wanted to move on and was "quitting this space".
"I do not want to continue what I am doing. I have done enough. It is time for me to take a break and do something else in life. I want to quit this space," Mr Kishor had told NDTV in an exclusive interview in May, a day after state election results that featured big wins for his clients Mamata Banerjee and MK Stalin in Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
On whether he would rejoin politics, he said: "I am a failed politician. I have to go back and see what I have to do." On a lighter note, he talked about going with his family to Assam and "doing tea-gardening".
That comment set off talk about his re-entry - after a botched stint with Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United - into politics.
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But Mr Kishor's experience with the Congress in the past has not been satisfactory either.
In 2017, the Congress tied up with the Samajwadi Party for the Uttar Pradesh election but the alliance failed and the BJP won. Mr Kishor, who shaped the Congress strategy, could only draw consolation from the party's win in Punjab.
Since then, he has often criticized India's oldest party and its style of functioning.
In May, he had remarked that the Congress is a "100-year-old political party and they have their ways of functioning".
"They are not open to working on the ways suggested by people like Prashant Kishor or others. They won't be open to working with my style of functioning," he had said, adding that the Congress "must realise that it has a problem and then do something about it".
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Mr Kishor had also suggested that "the Congress must introspect where it is going wrong".
