BJP Raises 9 Crore Payment, Prashant Kishor Threatens To Sue: Sources

New Delhi: Prashant Kishor, the election strategist bestowed with a top government job in Bihar, has decided to sue Sushil Kumar Modi, the BJP's leader in the state, said sources.

Yesterday, Mr Modi said that Mr Kishor had been paid nearly nine crores for drafting the details of a new plan for developing Bihar, and for publicising it. The BJP leader said the money had been paid to Mr Kishor, 39, through 'Citizens Alliance Private Limited', a firm registered in Noida near Delhi.

Sources close to Mr Kishor said that his defamation lawsuit will stress that though he helped create Citizens Alliance as a non-profit policy group in 2013, he did not ever serve as either a director, shareholder of employee or the agency.  

Mr Kishor now acts as a strategist through another non-profit called I-PAC or the Indian Political Action Committee.

The "Bihar@2025 vision document", the BJP says, is part of Mr Kishor's assignment, and involves creating schemes for the development of one of India's most backward states.

"After getting Rs 9.31 crore for preparing the vision document for the state, Kishor neither prepared the document nor discharged his duty as the Chief Minister's adviser," Mr Modi said, pointing to Mr Kishor's long absence from Bihar while he works on the election strategy of his latest client, the Congress, in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

He said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar must disclose what Mr Kishor has contributed to the government in the last eight months.

"Modi ji has lost his balance after the Bihar defeat for the BJP and keeps using Prashant Kishor as his punching bag," said Sanjay Singh, chief spokesman of the Chief Minister's party, the Janata Dal-United.

Mr Kishor's aides say that the nine crores that the BJP is referring to were spent before the election on a campaign called Badh Chala Bihar which involved  surveying 40,000 villages to collate feedback on what the  government should focus on. Mr Kumar was criticised by the BJP for passing this off as a government exercise when it was, in fact, PR for him ahead of voting. The money spent was given to two firms that Mr Kishor has no involvement with, said his aides on the condition of anonymity, adding that it is a government agency that has been tasked with prepping the report based on the survey.

In November, Mr Kumar was re-elected for a third consecutive term as Chief Minister. For his campaign, he had partnered with Mr Kishor, a unique collaboration because for the national election, the strategist was a crucial component of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's high-octane bid for the country's top job.

Mr Kishor, after a reported falling out with BJP chief Amit Shah, began working in June last year with Mr Kumar, among the top opponents and critics of the BJP. Mr Kishor's team famously includes alum from the country's premium IIT and IIM institutes.  

After Mr Kumar won Bihar, he rewarded Mr Kishor by giving him a position equal in status to a cabinet minister, but the strategist has not claimed a salary or benefits, said his aides.