Patna: In a significant political development, poll strategist Prashant Kishor was on Tuesday appointed the vice-president of the Janata Dal-United by party chief Nitish Kumar, making him the second most powerful man in Bihar ruling party. The new responsibility comes barely a month after he joined the party.
“The JD-U hopes his expertise and experience will boost the party in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections,” party spokesperson KC Taygi said Tuesday.
0I am grateful to the party and the leadership for giving this responsibility and honour. I am committed to Nitish Kumar’s idea of justice with development and Bihar,” Kishor tweeted.
Sources said Kishor’s prime responsibility would be to chart out poll campaign for the party in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls and hold the challenging task of seat-sharing deal with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The JD-U, which won just two seats in the last 2014 LS polls, has been seeking a “respectable” number of seats from its ally, the BJP, but the latter has not responded positively and has kept the seat-sharing talks on hold.
However, Nitish Kumar’s move is set to cause discontent in the party as Kishor has been given this responsibility, bypassing a string of senior leaders in the party. “The move will prove disastrous for the JD-U. He has been given the post after overlooking a number of grass-root party leaders,” commented Rashtriya Janata Dal lawmaker Bhai Birendra.
In 2016, the chief minister appointed him as his adviser, giving him the status of a cabinet minister, shortly after his role as a poll strategist following the party’s victory in 2015 state polls.
Although his job as an adviser was to advise the chief minister over the issues concerning development policies and programme implementation, he was never seen in Patna and remained busy in chalking out poll strategy either for the Congress in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh or YSR Congress party in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana though with limited success.
Before being hired by Nitish Kumar, Kishor was the architect of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2014 Lok Sabha poll campaign. The much-hyped ‘chai par charcha’ (talks over tea) campaign and 3D hologram rallies were said to be his brainchild, which brought Modi closer to the common men and ultimately paved his way for landslide victory in the parliamentary polls.
