Struggling to stop Bharatiya Janata Party’s surge in West Bengal, chief minister Mamata Banerjee met well-known poll strategist Prashant Kishor in Kolkata on Thursday, triggering speculation that he could work for Trinamool Congress. Sources said Kishor has agreed to work with Trinamool Congress to help the regional party stop a resurgent BJP in the new assembly polls due in the state in 2021.
Sources said Mamata and Kishor have entered into an agreement that will see Kishor’s political consultancy firm, Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC), working for Trinamool Congress from next month. This is the first time Mamata, who single-handedly ended the 34-year-long Left Front rule in in West Bengal in 2011 assembly elections, is seeking an expert’s help to run her poll campaign.
The meeting between Kishor and Mamata came less than two weeks after the results of recent parliamentary poll showed BJP putting up a stunning performance winning 18 of the total of 42 seats as against 22 of Trinamool Congress. Five years ago, BJP had just two seats in Bengal and Trinamool had 34. A senior Trinamool Congress leader said on condition of anonymity that Mamata’s nephew and Diamond Harbour lawmaker Abhishek Banerjee was also present during her nearly two-hour meeting with Kishor. At the meeting, Mamata and Kishor reportedly discussed the situation in West Bengal and exchanged some ideas. A third Trinamool leader admitted that the ground situation has “changed completely”. “Even she (Banerjee) knows that the people are fed up with the Trinamool because of two reasons: rampant corruption and extortion at the ground level and Trinamool’s soft pedaling towards one particular community. Bengal has become a fertile ground for the BJP to grow further.” Interestingly, Kishor is the vice president of Janata Dal (United) which rules Bihar state in alliance with BJP. Janata Dal (U) said it had no information of the Mamata-Kishor meeting and left it to the party chief (Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar) to take a decision. “We came to know about the meeting through the media. It is up to him (Kishor) to explain what talk he had with the West Bengal CM and in what capacity,” said Janata Dal(U) General Secretary K C Tyagi. The BJP refused to comment and said the matter involved two leaders (Nitish Kumar and Kishor) of an NDA ally.
Kishor was considered as having successfully crafted BJP’s strategy for the previous general elections in 2014 which brought Modi to power. In 2015 assembly elections in Bihar, Kishor was again credited with being the architect behind the victory of Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal - JD (U)-Congress alliance in Bihar against BJP. However, Kishor failed to click with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh assembly election in 2017 when BJP roared back to power with a remarkable three-fourth majority decimating its rivals. But Kishor again shot into limelight recently having worked with Andhra Pradeshs’ regional party YSR Congress Party which won a landslide victory in both the parliamentary and assembly elections in the southern state inflicting a crushing defeat on N Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party which had ruled for the last five years.
