Prashant Kishor's Blueprint For The Opposition

In an exclusive interview, the election strategist analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition and lays out a gameplan to challenge the BJP in 2024

- Raj Chengappa

For an accidental political strategist, Prashant Kishor has an impressive track record. He has advised leaders across the political spectrum, from Narendra Modi to Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar, Rahul Gandhi, M.K. Stalin, Jagan Mohan Reddy, Arvind Kejriwal and Captain Amarinder Singh. Of the nine election campaigns that he has helped strategise, eight resulted in victory. The latest being the May 2021 assembly election in West Bengal where Mamata Banerjee won a landslide to be re-elected chief minister for a third stint despite the BJP throwing everything it had in the game. As well as M.K. Stalin’s win in Tamil Nadu. The only campaign Kishor lost was an effort to get the Congress to win the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly election.

The 44­-year-­old former UN public health specialist stumbled into the hazardous profession of poll advocacy when he met Narendra Modi in 2010 while the latter was the chief minister of Gujarat. What began as advice to the forward­look­ ing chief minister on health issues turned into campaigns for nutrition for the Gujarat government to writing Modi’s speeches. “One thing led to another,” says Kishor, “and I got involved in his political campaign.” He helped Modi in his highly successful re­election cam­paign in 2012 and then got formal­ ly involved in his 2014 campaign to become prime minister.