So, after a week-long drama and headlines, it seems as if ace strategist Prashant Kishor will not be joining the Congress party. What went wrong? According to sources the deal fell through because Kishor wanted total control to undertake an organisational rehaul of the party. He wanted a senior position within the party whereby he would be reporting directly to the Gandhis but at the same time, the mode of communication would not be so much reporting as giving directions. And we all know how the Gandhis would take that.
As expected they didn’t take up Kishor’s offer to come and lord over the party. Instead, he was offered a position in the Empowered Committee that was being set up to prepare the party for 2024. Kishor clearly did not want to be just another committee member. Moreover, he saw through the offer for what it really was: “the position of a fall guy.” Someone who would be blamed if things went wrong but won’t get much credit if his suggestions bore fruit.
Another bone of contention of course was PK’s firm IPAC that recently tied up with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) for next year’s assembly polls. Congress is the main opposition party in the state taking on the TRS. Congress leaders immediately raised the timing and the tie-up with the TRS. The Congress incharge for Telangana, Manikam Tagore tweeted that – `Never trust someone who is friends with your enemy’. Tagore is also considered a key member of Rahul Gandhi’s team. Add this factoid to the fact that Rahul Gandhi attended only the first meeting between Sonia Gandhi and Kishor. He has been missing since (gone abroad we are told) while both Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Sonia have been present during all the other interactions with Kishor. Does this mean Rahul was always against Kishor’s entry? Probably. Rahul has been complaining that his hands were tied by the Old Guard, his colleagues claim that Team Sonia does not let Team Rahul function independently. Given that, why would Rahul welcome another power center?
It is also interesting to note that while Kishor’s suggestions made sense, there was little new in what he said. The G 23 had flagged the same issues much earlier – lack of a credible narrative to counter the BJP, no full-time Congress president, the Gandhis’ inability to win polls, no organisational polls, a weak state, and central leadership, etc. If the Gandhis felt insecure by the G 23 then why would they hand over the party controls to a total outsider?
There also seems to be a divergence of goals. The Congress leadership wants to revive the Congress. Rahul has stated that he is not interested in becoming the next Prime Minister, his interest is to defeat the BJP and also to revive the Congress. Going by Kishor— and IPAC’s actions— his limited agenda was to defeat the BJP in the next Lok Sabha polls. He was not so vested in reviving the Congress beyond the 100 plus seats the Opposition needed the Congress to win to defeat the BJP. This is why Kishor told the Congress to focus only on the winnable seats, to contest around 370 or so seats instead of all 543 in the next Lok Sabha polls. The balance would come from the allies, as would the opposition’s Prime Minister candidate. This is why IPAC went ahead and tied up with the TRS. It also has tie-ups with the TMC, DMK, YSCP in place has done business with Arvind Kejriwal earlier, and has an equation with the NCP. Given all this, it can be safely deduced that while the Gandhis wanted a revival of the Congress, Kishor was more focused on strengthening the UPA. And playing kingmaker in the bargain.
Just take a look at Kishor’s interviews with the media. For one, he has maintained that his focus is the Lok Sabha polls in 2024 and not any assembly elections that come up before that. He has also been pointing out that there are around 200 Lok Sabha seats where the BJP could not get more than 50 seats, even at its peak. These include the states of Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. As he told NDTV, “If the Congress or Trinamool or any other party or combination of these parties realign themselves, and reboot their resources and strategy, and say they pull about 100 seats from the 200, then the opposition can reach 250-260 even with the present numbers. So, it (defeating the BJP) is possible by winning another 100 seats in the north and west.” Later Prashant told Congress that it should focus on 370 seats and that it should fight alone in UP, Bihar, and Odisha but form an alliance in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Maharashtra. (One can assume he was planning to add Telangana to the alliance list as well.)
This, then, is the crux of Kishor’s strategy. What he is essentially working for is the revival of the UPA and not just the Congress. He has made it clear that his focus is to defeat the BJP in the next Lok Sabha. He has also stated that while this would not be possible without the Congress getting its act together, Congress alone cannot take on the BJP (in its current shape). So the need of the hour is a Congress plus alliance and who better to put it together than Prashant Kishor.