Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, July 13: Poll strategist Prashant Kishor who lately had been meeting several opposition leaders, particularly the veteran Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, fuelling speculations about a possible joint front against the BJP, held a meeting with the former Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
The meeting with Rahul was also attended by his sister and the Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and two other general secretaries KC Venugopal and Harish Rawat, who is in-charge of Punjab affairs.
The party sources, however, claimed that Tuesday’s meeting with Kishor had nothing to do with the opposition front but was devoted only to the top-level tussle within the Punjab Congress between the chief minister Amarinder Singh and his bitter critic within the party, the cricketer-turned-politician Navjyot Singh Sidhu. Punjab is due to go the state Assembly polls early next year.
The importance of the meeting with Kishor could be guessed from the fact that Priyanka Gandhi who was scheduled to leave for Lucknow on Tuesday cancelled the visit to attend the Rahul – Kishor meeting.
The meeting took place against the backdrop of efforts to broker peace between the Congress’s top two in Punjab ahead of polls next year, Amarinder Singh and Sidhu. Both the Gandhis have met with Amarinder Singh and Navjot Sidhu separately in recent weeks.
In 2017, Kishor was instrumental in bringing Sidhu to the Congress, just before the Punjab polls. Sidhu, who quit as a BJP Rajya Sabha member, was then believed to be vacillating between the Congress and Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) before Kishor brought him to the Congress.
But not long after the Congress won Punjab, powered by Kishor’s strategy, Amarinder Singh and Sidhu fell out. Two years later Sidhu quit the cabinet.
Sidhu met with Priyanka Gandhi for four hours and tweeted a photo with her. Priyanka Gandhi reportedly facilitated his meeting with her brother, who had earlier told reporters he had no meeting with the sulking Punjab leader.
Days later, Amarinder Singh met with Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Delhi and later told reporters: “I don’t know anything about Sidhu saab. Whatever is the decision, whatever the Congress president wants, we will follow it.”
But Singh has reportedly been resistant to ideas that involve a massive upgrade for Sidhu in the Punjab government and party. After the last meeting, Congress sources had talked about a formula in which Amarinder Singh would stay Chief Minister and the Punjab Congress would be revamped to accommodate Sidhu.
Kishor had also met with Amarinder Singh last week. Credited with many election victories across the political spectrum, the strategist also crafted Amarinder Singh’s 2017 Punjab campaign.
Rahul Gandhi had last collaborated with Prashant Kishor in the Congress’s failed campaign for the Uttar Pradesh election in 2017. The Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance flopped and the BJP came to power.
Kishor’s meeting with the Congress leaders came days after he held talks with Sharad Pawar. Kishor and Pawar had met in Delhi for the second time in nearly two weeks on June 21 amid buzz about a national front of opposition parties against the BJP at the Centre ahead of the general elections scheduled to be held in 2024.
Kishor, who was instrumental in the thumping victory of the Trinamool Congress in the West Bengal Assembly elections, had recently met Pawar. The closed-door meeting between Kishor and Pawar at the NCP chief’s residence lasted for about one-and-a-half hours.
Before that Sharad Pawar and Prashant Kishor met for nearly three hours in Mumbai on June 11.
The Kishor – Rahul meeting was held when the party was working on a strategy to save the party by accommodating both Singh and Sidhu. The party sources said a decision on making Sidhu the state Congress president while Singh continue as the chief minister.
Kishor is Captain Amarinder Singh’s principal adviser. He has joined Singh ahead of the assembly elections in Punjab. Assembly elections in Punjab are scheduled for next year.
Kishor had handled the Congress poll campaign in the 2017 Punjab assembly polls. The Congress in 2017 had stormed to power by bagging 77 seats in the 117-member assembly.
Kishor was the brain behind Punjab Congress programmes such as “Coffee with Captain” and “Punjab Da Captain” to drum up support for the party.
