Prashant Kishor: The False Whiz

PRASHANT KISHOR, POPULARLY known among his admirers as PK, never once downplayed his soar­ing ambitions when the former election strategist launched a political party a few years ago. He decided to contest the Bihar polls this year, vowing to disrupt the duopoly in the state’s politics—something he referred to as the “bonded labour” of the people of his home state who were having to choose between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led Mahagathbandhan. Contrary to such lofty goals and great expectations from his supporters and newfound admirers, far from being a credible third alternative, the state’s famously astute voters delivered him little more than politi­cal irrelevance. Of his own dreams in politics—after ensuring big-ticket wins for others for more than a decade—on November 14, the famed strategist woke up to the stark reality of his party failing to resonate with voters and to translating all that media attention into electoral gains.

The hype around him ensured that his campaign was highly televised, and the man was interviewed tirelessly on TV chan­nels and media outlets that zealously pitched him as a contender whose Jan Suraaj Party would eat into the votes of traditional parties. Kishor, vocal and unrestrained, went on to make claims and promises that included the following: that if Chief Minister Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), won more than 25 seats in the 2025 Bihar Assembly polls, he would quit poli­tics. Meanwhile, columnists heaped praise on Kishor, although the deeper one got inside Bihar, the less was spoken about him by the common folk, as stated, and rightly so, by CPI(ML) leader Dipankar Bhattacharya. In an apparent confirmation of class bias, a Delhi-based commentator lapped up Kishor as a potential king­maker and the ‘X factor’. Simply put, Kishor received more focus during the poll campaign from elsewhere than in Bihar, thanks to a section of the media that kept discussing his poll prospects long after the two-phase elections ended on November 11.

For the reams written about Kishor’s transition from a poll strategist to a politician, starting with a 3,000km padyatra last year across Bihar called the ‘Jan Suraaj Padyatra’, Kishor’s trumpeted solo political foray has turned into a flop show, and the threat he would pose against the others has been grossly exaggerated. A for­mer colleague who had worked with Kishor at the Indian People’s Action Committee (IPAC), the political strategy firm headed by him, says: “He is well-networked among media honchos in Delhi, and it was no surprise, therefore, that his campaign was widely covered. Obviously, his intention was to create a halo around him with such coverage. He is very good with that. Beyond that, it was naïve on anyone’s part to have expected him to do well in politics against experienced leaders heading deeply entrenched political entities.”

Kishor did brag to reporters who met him in Bihar, saying he had managed to occupy the opposition space in the state in this election. Much to their anguish, many people bought that story because, firstly, in politics, there is also some value given to someone who offers a refreshing change. But, says a person who had worked with him in the campaign that made him famous—the 2014 Lok Sabha election for Prime Minister Narendra Modi—as part of the organ­isation called Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG), which preceded IPAC: “He has no equanimity about him. He behaves as an entitled person. Yes, I respect him as a smart, sharp person who can read data and figure out what they are all about, but in politics, you have to be grounded. Whether or not you are exceptionally brilliant as a professional, all that swagger may not help you win people’s hearts, especially when you are up against weather-beaten politicians.” Another person who had worked with him at IPAC says that although he is an accomplished professional from whom one can learn a lot about elections and political strategy, he seems to be a man in a hurry as a politician: “If he is in politics for the long haul, he may stand to gain. Not otherwise.”

Kishor did have a stint in politics from 2018 to 2020 as vice-presi­dent of the JD (U) under Nitish Kumar. Just as he was a blue-eyed boy of Modi from 2012 to 2014, he was a favourite of Kumar, since Kishor helped formulate strategies for the 2015 state assembly election in which Kumar fought in alliance with Lalu Prasad’s RJD, to win by a landslide. Open had written in 2015, shortly after the polls, that Kishor had endeared himself to Lalu with his pleasing manners when it came to handling tough politicians. He also became a ‘chan­nel’ between Nitish and Lalu, ensuring smooth communication. He even had a say in the choice of candidates for constituencies. He became a go-between between the leadership of RJD and JD(U) in 2015.

True, Kishor had an enviable track record of orchestrating big-ticket poll victories, first in 2014 and then in 2015. But he failed to click after winning the account of the Congress in the 2017 Ut­tar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election, in which the BJP won more than 300 seats and the Congress could only manage seven seats. However, he had good stints with Amarinder Singh in Pun­jab in 2017, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy in 2019 in Andhra Pradesh, Arvind Kejriwal in the 2020 Delhi polls, Mamata Banerjee in 2021 in West Bengal, MK Stalin in 2021 in Tamil Nadu, and so on.

But his own political stint was short-lived. He was sacked from JD(U) 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. Nonetheless, Kishor continued his work as a professional strategist as the founder of IPAC until 2022, when he decided it was time for him to seek people’s mandate directly as a politician, not merely as a strategist. Kishor’s makeover had started long ago. For someone who spoke off the record in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and afterwards and wore tight jeans and T-shirts, in a matter of a year or so, he began donning spotless white kurta pyjama, campaigning for Kumar. It was also a time when he wanted to be seen as more than a poll strategist and a vocal commentator.

AS THE LEADER OF CAG, he attracted young profes­sionals and graduates from IIMs and IITs to work for him in 2014, emerging as a wunderkind of sorts. Open had reported before that, in hindsight, Kishor’s ‘reign’ of sorts in the Modi camp began around the time when Amit Shah was banished from the state during the erstwhile UPA regime at the Centre, and his influence over Modi began to wane with Shah’s return to the scheme of things around the newly elected Prime Minister in mid- 2014. Soon, Kishor would find his access to Modi restricted, leaving him and his team in the lurch. BJP leaders soon began referring to him as a ‘vendor’.

It was then that Kishor began pursuing new options and ran into Pavan K Varma, who introduced Kishor to Nitish Kumar. Unlike with the BJP, other parties like the JD(U), Congress, AAP, YSRCP, DMK and TMC gave Kishor more freedom and flexibility in his role as a poll strategist. A person close to the matter told Open, “I have no doubts that Kishor is very good with Big Data and is a great strate­gist. But often he wanted to micromanage the affairs of the party he was working for. He would also make top leaders wait to throw his weight around. At the same time, he turned up on time for journal­ists who were keen to help him build an aura around him. He began to display a sense of exaggerated importance.” Shortly after the 2015 win of the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad combine, a triumphant Kishor had reporters chase him from Patna to Delhi and back just for an interview, revelling in the pleasure of them chasing him.

Kishor had told me long ago about his thrust on a presidential-style campaign in 2014. “I firmly believe that to do a presidential campaign you need your own resources to conceptualise, plan and implement in a preferred manner (and you can’t rely on outside vendors to do it for you),” he told me, stressing that hiring multiple outside agencies for planning and execution of a political party’s campaign often proved disastrous and cumbersome. “Which is why I created CAG,” he had said.

The man who once prided himself on crafting India’s most po­tent political brands has, this time, failed to deploy his own brand effectively. Despite the hype, his campaign didn’t strike a chord, giving detractors fresh ammunition to claim he can sell only those brands that are already destined for success, and that his long win­ning streak was merely luck. For the 48-year-old Kishor, this election was, to put it mildly, a resounding setback.