PK Guided Many Leaders To Poll Wins. His Party Fails To Open Bihar Account

Not all coaches win matches. This has come true for poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who guided many a leader to electoral victory, but faced a massive defeat in his first poll test. His Jan Suraaj Party, touted as a third front and a political alternative in Bihar, failed to open its account in the hinterland ballot battle. Speaking to NDTV at the Bihar Power Play conclave earlier this month, Prashant Kishor had said he would either win "fewer than 10 seats or more than 150". He must not have imagined that "fewer than 10" could be zero. What's worse, many Jan Suraaj candidates performed so poorly that they are likely to forfeit their deposits, meaning Kishor can't even seek refuge in statistics and claim that he put up a fight.

Prashant Kishor The Strategist

Kishor made headlines as a poll strategist when he crafted the Narendra Modi-led BJP's winning campaign in the 2012 Gujarat election. At the time, political consultancy for elections was not very common, and Kishor was catapulted to the limelight as the BJP scored a thumping win. Team Narendra Modi used Kishor's expertise in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, too, as the BJP rode a Modi wave to power at the Centre. The next year, however, Kishor was on the other side, finetuning the Mahagathandhan campaign in Bihar, and he struck gold again as the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Yadav combine cruised to a win.

In the 2017 Punjab election, Kishor guided Amarinder Singh, then with Congress, to a win. He then assisted YSRCP's Jagan Mohan Reddy and delivered his Andhra Pradesh victory.

In 2021, Kishor assisted the MK Stalin-led DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, and both parties scored big.

A Brief Political Break

Three years after he guided Nitish Kumar in the 2015 campaign, Kishor sprang a surprise when he joined the JDU in 2018. Nitish Kumar appointed him as JDU's National Vice President, a big post for someone with no electoral experience. According to reports, this upset a section of top JDU leaders, but Nitish Kumar appeared unfazed to this grumbling.

Kishor played a key role in the JDU's 2019 Lok Sabha election when it tied up with the BJP and won 16 seats, recovering from its 2014 rout.

Kishor's JDU stint, however, was short-lived. His public criticism of Nitish Kumar's support for the Citizenship Amendment Act paved the way for his exit from JDU.

Jan Suraaj Party, Then Bihar Yatra

After guiding DMK and Trinamool Congress to victory in the 2021 Assembly polls, Kishor announced that he had decided to "quit this space" and "do something else". The next year, he launched the Jan Suraaj Abhiyan. Over the next four months, he travelled through the length and breadth of the state and said he was out to understand the concerns of the people at the grassroots and formulate a long-term strategy to transform Bihar.

Months after the Lok Sabha election, he announced the formation of the Jan Suraaj Party. He also made it clear that Jan Suraaj would be contesting the 2025 Bihar election.

The Massive Rout

In the run-up to the election, Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party led an energetic campaign, and its social media footprint, and many believed it would emerge as a formidable political force. In interviews, Kishor expressed confidence that Jan Suraaj will put up a good show and stressed that JDU was staring at a rout. Among Jan Suraaj's candidates were Bhojpuri singers, former bureaucrats, academics, and also veteran politicians earlier with other parties.

On counting day, however, the picture was the opposite. Jan Suraaj failed to open its account, and its candidates' tallies showed they didn't count for much. The JDU, on the other hand, gained big, winning 41 more seats than it did in 2020.

During interviews, Kishor was asked what he would do if Jan Suraaj did not perform well. He had then said he had committed 10 years to Bihar and would keep working for the state for the next five years.

He is yet to make a public statement on the results. But Manoj Bharti, the Bihar chief of Jan Suraaj, has said "people could not understand" Jan Suraaj's way of politics. "Perhaps we could not make people understand. We will start again," he said.

Kishor does get points for launching a new political party in Bihar's tricky political terrain. But his first outing highlights the gulf between social media campaigns and ground realities, and between political messaging and hard vote math.