The Bihari origin election strategist Prashant Kishor has been appointed as the principal advisor to Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh at the token salary of Re 1 per month. He would get cabinet minister-rank (with associated perks). The appointment has come a year ahead of the Assembly election in the state.
Kishor’s firm Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) had worked for the Congress party in the 2017 Assembly election which it won comfortably. It had bagged 77 out of 117 seats then. Though the Congress is very well placed this time and Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance broken yet Amarinder is taking no chance.
At present, Prashant Kishor’s firm is working for the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and DMK in Tamil Nadu. Kishor has been quoted in NDTV as saying that Amarinder Singh is “like family”. “I can’t say ‘no’ to him…”
Amarinder on his part tweeted: “Happy to share that Prashant Kishor has joined me as my Principal Advisor. Look forward to working together for the betterment of the people of Punjab!”
Prashant Kishor, who had started working for the BJP in Gujarat ahead of 2012 Assembly election was instrumental in the victory of Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance in 2014 Lok Sabha election but he later distanced himself from the BJP and worked for Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal-United in the 2015 Assembly election in Bihar. The Grand Alliance, whose other two constituents were RJD and Congress, swept the polls winning 178 out of 243 seats. Nitish later appointed him as his adviser with Cabinet rank post but just before the 2019 Lok Sabha election differences surfaced between the two.
Recently Kishor has once again claimed that the BJP would not cross the two-digit mark in West Bengal. Opinion polls done in the past few weeks suggest that Mamata Banerjee is comfortably going to win the election.
