Prashant Kishor: How India's best-known poll strategist finally became a lawmaker
Just last year, Prashant Kishor, one of India's best-known election strategists, failed to win a single seat for his Jan Suraj party in the crucial
Just last year, Prashant Kishor, one of India's best-known election strategists, failed to win a single seat for his Jan Suraj party in the crucial state elections in Bihar. Many saw it as a disastrous electoral debut and wondered whether he would return. Now, Kishor has pulled off an unexpected comeback. He has won a prestigious by-election and is set to be sworn in as a lawmaker for the first time.
The result has surprised many political observers. While most caution that it is too early to draw broad conclusions from a single by-election, the victory has revived debate over both Kishor's political future and whether Jan Suraj can emerge as a serious force in Bihar. The 49-year-old defeated the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bankipur, a seat the party had held since 1995. Its former legislator, Nitin Nabin, inherited the constituency from his father and won it five times before resigning earlier this year after being elected to parliament's upper house.
Until recently, Kishor was known as the most sought-after strategist in Indian politics. He helped shape Prime Minister Narendra Modi's breakthrough general election victory in 2014, introducing campaign techniques that were unusual in India at the time, including beaming the candidate into thousands of small gatherings via hologram. But he soon fell out with the BJP. He then helped forge the JD(U)-RJD alliance that defeated the BJP in Bihar's 2015 assembly election, before joining the JD(U) as its vice-president under then chief minister Nitish Kumar.
But there was another break-up waiting to happen. In 2020, Kishor quit the JD(U) over its support for the Citizenship Amendment Act, a controversial citizenship law introduced by the BJP-led federal government.
The BriefWire