Prashant Kishor confirmed to NDTV that he will devote his strategy now to the re-election of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar
Prashant Kishor, seen as one of the key ingredients of the special sauce of the innovative election campaign for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has a new boss.
Mr Kishor, 37, confirmed to NDTV this morning that he will devote his strategy now to the re-election of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, whose rivalry with the PM is legendary.
Bihar will vote between September and October, the Election Commission has announced. Mr Kumar has hitched his Janata Dal United's wagon to an alliance of six parties that will jointly contest the election as the Janata Parivar with the intent of defeating the PM's party, the BJP.
"Nitish Kumar is one of the most credible politicians and is credited for establishing governance and rule of law in a challenging state like Bihar," Mr Kishor said in Patna. Mr Kishor also hinted at what the selling points of the campaign for Mr Kumar might include: "His focus and result on improving actual delivery of services especially in social sector is literally unmatched in today's context."
Mr Kishor trained as a public health expert and left his job in the United Nations in 2011, returning to India from Africa to join a team of young professionals who called themselves Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG). Many in the group were alumni of IITs and IIMs; they put together a wildly successful social media plan to project Mr Modi as the face of good governance for the Gujarat elections in 2012 and then the national election last year.
Mr Kishor is credited with some of the clutter-busting techniques and innovations of Mr Modi's campaign including the employment of 3-d holograms at public rallies and the "
chai pe charcha" outreach, which turned a barb by Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar about Mr Modi's days as a young tea-seller on trains into a point of public connect.
Mr Kishor has made it clear that his affiliation was limited to Mr Modi and not his party. "I was never associated with the BJP. I was working in my private capacity for Modi," he said to news agency Press Trust of India.