NEW DELHI/ PANJIM: The saga of poll strategist Prashant Kishor with the Congress ended on Tuesday just after 10 days of his latest flirting with the party to offer ideas on how the grand old party can be revived to oust the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
He withdrew from the possibility of joining the Congress after some of its leaders suspected him to be a mole planted by the BJP, for which he had worked in 2014 to bring Narendra Modi to power.
While Kishor in his tweets seemed to indicate that he ‘declined’ the Congress offer, Congress sources maintained that the trust factor was not in his favour, especially after the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), an organisation where Kishor is the universal guide and guru, signed a contract with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).
Kishor wanted to parachute into the Congress at the top and deal with the Congress President directly with completely a free hand in the elections, which most leaders disapproved of. Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi was the first to oppose his direct entry into the party and virtually rule over others instead of becoming a part of the collective leadership.
I-PAC will work with the ruling TRS in the Telangana Assembly elections the next year. This proved to be his nemesis since he violated Sonia Gandhi’s condition that he should not work with any political party as in the past if he joins the Congress.
Reacting to the development the belligerent and angry Goa TMC president, Kiran Kandolkar (till Monday, April 25 after which the State executive was dismissed over WhatsApp messages and tweets, believed to be emanating on the directions of TMC’s Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien) said, “No one trusts Prashant Kishor. Even the TRS will soon realise. Why only in Hyderabad no one in the entire country trusts him.”
Kandolkar and his wife Kavita who resigned from the Party on Monday, April 25 have both attacked Kishor and I-PAC for not meeting commitments and fulfilling promises and leaving behind a line of vendors who are demanding payments for services rendered during the TMC’s election campaign.
Congress chief spokesman and general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala broke the news that Kishor was earlier “invited to join the party as part of the group with defined responsibility.”
Immediately, after Kishor also tweeted: “I declined the generous offer of Congress to join the party as part of the EAG (Empowered Action Group) and take responsibility for the elections. In my humble opinion, more than me, the party needs leadership and collective will to fix the deep-rooted structural problems through transformational reforms.”
