Priyanka Gandhi-Prashant Kishor Met After Bihar Rout, For Hours: Sources

Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra met Jan Suraaj boss Prashant Kishor in Delhi - at Sonia Gandhi's 10, Janpath residence - last week, sources told NDTV Monday morning.

The meeting - after a Bihar election in which both were routed by the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ally, the Janata Dal United - led to buzz over a renewal of ties between a party unable to challenge the BJP in elections and a poll strategist with a reputation for leading parties to exactly those kind of victories.

Predictably, however, both sides are staying quiet for now.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, asked about the meeting, said, "Nobody is interested in who I meet... or who I don't", while PK, as Kishor is called, flatly denied any meeting with the Congress leader.

Regardless, sources with knowledge of the Priyanka Gandhi-PK meeting told NDTV there are 'possibilities', pointing to both sides' poor performance in Bihar. The Jan Suraaj contested 238 Assembly seats and won zero, while the Congress won only six of 61, 13 fewer than last time.

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Kishor and the party have worked together in the past, though with mixed results.

In 2017 PK led then-Congress leader Amarinder Singh to victory over the BJP-Akali Dal in Punjab. That year, however, the Congress-Samajwadi Party was defeated in Uttar Pradesh.

The win was celebrated but the loss rankled.

Rahul Gandhi, sources said, was not convinced by PK joining the Congress (File).

Some in the Congress' state unit accused him of overreach in trying to engineer a winning campaign. PK would later describe that experience of working with the Congress as "bad" and called out the party's organisational culture - a lament others have since made too - and decision-making.

But, four years later, with the next Uttar Pradesh election months away, PK was on the brink of joining the party; he held talks with Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Rahul Gandhi.

RECAP | Prashant Kishor To Join Congress? Big Hint After Meeting With Gandhis

Those talks, however, bombed.

Sources told NDTV then Priyanka Gandhi was in favour of allowing PK the free hand he wanted to reshape the Congress' blunt electoral strategies. But senior leaders, i.e., the Congress' old guard, were not, and crucially, neither was Rahul Gandhi.

RECAP | Refused Free Hand, Prashant Kishor Turns Down Offer From Congress

The handful of 'truth bombs' PK dropped - about the Congress' internal issues - didn't help. In October 2021, for example, he said the BJP would remain at the centre of Indian politics for years to come, arguing, "Once you secure 30 per cent votes... you're not going away in a hurry."

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In April 2022 he closed that chapter, saying a firm 'no' to the Congress as the party indicated to him that it was not ready for the sweeping changes he had demanded in his conditions.

Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj flopped on its poll debut in Bihar (File).

"In my humble opinion, more than me the party needs leadership and collective will to fix the deep-rooted structural problems through transformational reforms," he said then.

The birth of Jan Suraaj followed that breakdown in ties with the Congress.

The new party was meant to usher in a new era of politics in Bihar, an era epitomised by its selection of candidates and the issues it raised. In November PK told NDTV his party had, in fact, managed to shift the political discourse in Bihar - a chronically underdeveloped state - from caste to employment.

RECAP | Jan Suraaj Shifted Bihar Politics From Caste To Jobs: Prashant Kishor

Whether it did or not, the result was a massive disappointment, not just for PK but for all of the opposition. The main anti-BJP front - the Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Mahagathbandhan - was expected to build on 2020's stellar performance, but it flopped.

Defeats all around, sources have suggested, have prompted PK and the Congress to re-look at their relationship ahead critical elections in Tamil Nadu, Bengal, and Assam in 2026 and in Uttar Pradesh in 2027. The big prize is the 2029 Lok Sabha poll, when the BJP will be bid for a historic fourth term.

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