Think about a businessman who masquerades as a political strategist and runs far ashore when his ship sinks. Well, Prashant Kishor or PK certainly fits this typical persona. He is a man of no allegiance to anyone. He bags money and then leaves the ship in the middle of nowhere. Recently, he left Trinamool Congress in West Bengal when he realised that Mamata Banerjee is running out of steam and joined hands with Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. A week ago he was rooting against the Congress Party in West Bengal and a week after joined Congress for its campaigning in Punjab.
But before abandoning Mamata, he completely destroyed TMC from the core. He influenced the TMC Supremo and then lured her away from her own cabinet ministers. Prashant joined hands with TMC only a few years ago but successfully managed to create a rift in the twenty years old party. Even the oldest leaders and trustees of Mamata Banerjee could not tolerate his presence. As a matter of fact, as of now, more than two dozen TMC leaders have defected, and most of them joined TMC’s fierce opposition party – the BJP.
Kishor is a man of fickle character and very soon he will be called ‘Mr Flip Flop’. After the 2014 general elections, he was kicked out of BJP, then in the 2015 Bihar elections, he joined the Mahagathbandhan and Nitish welcomed him open-heartedly.
With mere luck or by flick, the Mahagathbandhan won but Prashant Kishor spread like cancer and destroyed the Mahagathbandhan from its core in such a manner that Nitish parted away from the grand alliance just after two years in 2017 and formed the government under the NDA.
The limitless greed of Prashant has no end. In 2018 again, he created a wall between BJP and JDU and then lobbied for a Lok Sabha seat during the 2019 elections. Yet again, BJP kicked him out on his dream project resulting in the NDA denying him any ticket. Old habits die hard and so Kishor betrayed Nitish and JDU once again.
After the UP election debacle, Prashant Kishor was distraught and said, “I have been wanting to get out of this domain. In 2019, you will not see PK campaigning for any party or individual.” The year 2019 is long gone and so are the words of PK. He is still doing the same job of breaking, lobbying, and bagging money and then abandoning the parties. Recently, Punjab Congress senior leader Navjot Singh Sidhu subtly attacked PK, saying, “States money directly draining into private pockets”. It was evident that Prashant will create division in Punjab Congress but it wasn’t anticipated this soon.
If we closely analyse Prashant’s victory, we can find the fact that his win is mostly dependent upon the popularity of the leader he is working for. For an instance, he managed to win because of the Modi wave but was challenged during the Uttar Pradesh 2017 election, where he was rooting for Rahul Gandhi. As a result, the endangered congress party fell into the extinct category.
A similar case was in the state of Punjab during the 2017 state election. He was hired when the Punjab Congress was already in a good position due to the incumbency of Akalis. In his long political strategist career, Kishor never managed to pull an impossible out of the blue win but his success was anticipated by political analysts.
Yet one thing is clear even when one observes a chameleon, Prashant Kishor is relentlessly trying to fight against BJP. Though after his loss he runs far away, when he returns, it is with the same agenda. From Uttar Pradesh state elections to West Bengal elections and now the management of Punjab elections – each time he tries to destroy the BJP, he ends up destroying the political party that employed him. Obviously, he is too bad for national politics but maybe good in petty politics.
I think PK wants to join politics. He seems to me like a person hungry for power and privileges. Amit Shah understood this very early and got rid of him. He tried to enter JDU as VP maybe with hope that he will emerge as a political heavy weight in that party, but Nitish was also smart enough to see this. His problem is that he has huge ambition in politics, but no ground support of voter base. So, he is searching for some party which can give him that platform where he can massage the ego of one leader and act as No.2 in the party with most decision making powers.
In short, he is like Amar Singh, Rajeev Shukla, etc, like a power broker. The difference is usually such people come with glamour and business contacts in a party, but he comes with this illusionary skill of electoral management. He has created this profession in India and is now exaggerating its potential. Politicians are usually insecure so they hire him and anyway they don’t pay him from their pocket.
In Bengal something special is happening. For the first time PK has come out and making claims like if BJP gets more than 99 he will quit this profession. Not only this is abnormal, but it seems he is trying to convince someone. Who is he trying to convince? Public? But, public doesn’t know him. It seems so many people have left TMC blaming him, that Mamta is in panic and maybe is doubting his abilities. So, he is making these claims to show confidence and in-turn win the confidence of Mamta by showing that he has put his career on the line. What he is trying to show is that he is confident, but I think he is in panic. I can be completely wrong, but let’s wait for 2 May.