Prashant Kishor: From Poll Strategist to Bypoll Star

THE FIRST TIME I sat down with PK (Prashant Kishor) for a one-on-one was shortly after Narendra Modi became prime minister for the first time in 2014, in which he and his team of largely apo­litical young people played a crucial role in a campaign that would emerge as a case study of perhaps the most successful one globally, combining online dis­semination of information with offline outreach. He was the architect, the super manager, the blue-eyed boy of Modi, who had earlier worked with the Gujarat strongman in his 2012 Assembly polls, which saw the use of Modi holograms. Back then, Kishor gave me all the details of what he described as the “presi­dential style” campaign of 2014. Kishor requested me not to quote him directly in my book War Room: The People, Tactics and Technol­ogy behind Narendra Modi’s 2014 Win, which came out a few months later. He was dressed in tight jeans and a polo shirt, was no-nonsense and yet warm. I was sitting before a man who, without doubt, offered India concrete proof of who a poll strategist is.

Shortly thereafter, he and his team in CAG, short for Citizens for Accountable Governance, found that their influence over Modi was on the wane and access was restricted. From being looked up to as a wunderkind, BJP leaders began to refer to him as a ‘vendor’, one who was good at his job, as Open had narrated in a 2016 story ear­lier (‘What’s Going Wrong with Prashant Kishor?’, July 31, 2016).

But then Kishor was ready to experiment in order to prove what he was worth. Within a year, he worked closely with Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad in the Bihar state polls, had a say even in the choice of candidates, and had traded his jeans for the typical spotless white kurta pyjama. Like Modi in 2014, the Maha­gathbandhan, or grand alliance, in Bihar in 2015 was a formidable force that had the capacity to bring a wide range of caste groups together. The poll results confirmed that the Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) combination could endure steep odds. Both communi­ties voted massively for the Mahagathbandhan, with Lalu’s RJD securing 80 of the 102 seats it contested, while BJP won only 53 out of 159 seats. Like RJD, Kumar’s JD(U) also had a stellar strike rate, winning 71 of the 101 seats it contested in the 243- member Bihar Assembly.

He then acquired the halo of a kingmaker, as he and CAG members regrouped as I-PAC (Indian Political Action Commit­tee). Kishor, who had an enviable track record of orchestrating big-ticket poll victories, first in 2014 and then in 2015, failed to click after securing the account of Congress in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Legisla­tive Assembly election, in which Congress could manage only seven seats. He, however, has a series of other wins to flaunt: by aligning with Amarinder Singh in Punjab in 2017, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh in 2019, Arvind Kejriwal in the 2020 Delhi polls, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal in 2021, MK Stalin in Tamil Nadu in 2021, and so on. He also played the “informal” role of an ad­viser to Vijay in the recent Tamil Nadu polls.

His standing as a politi­cian has, however, been less glorious. There was this saying that although he helped others win, he couldn’t help himself win polls in the much-hyped 2025 Bihar polls, where he was projected as a major contender for the opposi­tion slot but ended up falling flat.

Kishor, who joined JD(U) in 2018 as its vice-president, was sacked in 2020 for “violating organisational discipline” by making “controversial statements against the party’s official line” over the Citizenship (Amend­ment) Act and the Nation­al Population Register. The worst setback was the one in Bihar in 2025 (‘Prashant Kishor: The False Whiz’, November 24, 2025 ): Al­though his campaign was highly televised, and he was interviewed tirelessly on TV channels, Kishor couldn’t come anywhere close to his target: his new Jan Suraaj Party eating into the votes of traditional parties.

This year, however, we saw for the first time that he helped himself win an election—from Bankipur, where a bypoll was held after Nitin Nabin resigned following his election to the Rajya Sabha and eleva­tion as BJP president.

At least two bureaucrats hailing from Bihar and now posted in Delhi are thrilled about Kishor being elected from a seat that BJP had held since 1995 and about RJD being relegated to third place. “He has the capacity to be the voice of the opposition in the state Assembly,” says one of them. A former colleague at I-PAC concurs: “Kishor now has a legit voice in the Assembly. I don’t see this victory as an isolated win because Kishor has raised issues to do with governance in Bihar much more vocally than any opposition leader in the state. Even if he gets three minutes, his voice will be heard in the Assembly. So, this is big news for Bihar. Nationally, there will be impact because he has a broader appeal in the time of the changing grammar of Indian politics,” the person adds, emphasising that a realignment of forces in the state cannot be entirely ruled out.

The argument against Kishor’s sway is that he won from a seat where the voting turnout was typically never above 40 per cent. This time it was around 34 per cent. And so, to suggest the results reflect a pan-Bihar image of the winner would be an exaggeration. But then it is the most strident critic of the state BJP who has won against seemingly insurmountable odds in a saffron party stronghold. It was indeed a case of failure to counter the PK narrative.

Now, with Gen Z protests suggesting a shift in the rules of engagement, Kishor may find in this triumph an opportunity to position himself as a cred­ible opposition voice in the state. As with national politics, nothing is clear as yet, but politics is so unpre­dictable that at any moment a new star can be born.