Prashant Kishor, after nearly joining the Congress weeks ago, declared today that he would "never go with the party", folding his hands for emphasis.
The election strategist made the pronouncement while on his tour of Bihar villages to gather public views on an alternative government in his home state.
The Congress, he said, would go down and take everyone with it.
"In 2015, we won Bihar. In 2017, we won Punjab. In 2019 Jagan Mohan Reddy won in Andhra Pradesh. We won in Tamil Nadu and Bengal. In 11 years, we only lost one election... the 2017 Uttar Pradesh election. That is why I decided never to work with the Congress," Prashant Kishor, or PK, said, folding his hands.
The Congress, he said, was a party that would never get its act together. "And the current Congress bosses are such that they will go down and take everyone with them. If I go, I will also drown," said the ace strategist.
PK was talking at a gathering in Vaishaili to pay tribute to former Union Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh.
Earlier, the strategist had declared the recent Congress "Chintan Shivir" or strategy meet at Rajasthan's Udaipur a "failure" and had predicted doom for the party in the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh elections later this year.
PK's talks to collaborate with the Congress flopped for the second time in a year because of a disagreement over his role.
The strategist's 600-slide presentation on a Congress revival plan was discussed by a panel of senior leaders but it came to nothing. A plan he had presented to the Gandhis last year had recommended Sonia Gandhi as party president with a "Non-Gandhi" Working President or Vice President, and Rahul Gandhi as Parliamentary Board chief.
After days of negotiations, PK changed his mind on joining the Congress when he was reportedly asked to work for the party as a member of an "Empowered Action Group"; such a group, he said, did not have any authority under the party's constitution and would end up adding to the Congress's internal churning.
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