AICC gives nod for Prashant Kishor to assist Punjab Congress in polls

NEW DELHI/CHANDIGARH: Prashant Kishor, poll strategist of Narendra Modi in 2014 Lok Sabha polls who later worked for Nitish Kumar in Bihar assembly elections in 2015 will now work for Punjab Congress in the forthcoming state elections to be held in early 2017.

Disclosing this, Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh said "the All India Congress Committee has given its approval for Kishor to assist Punjab Congress in the forthcoming assembly elections in Punjab".

Punjab assembly elections are due early next year and Congress which has been out of power for the last nine years after been defeated twice at the hustings by ruling Akali-BJP combine, is seeking to wrest power again.

Punjab Congress will work out its poll strategy jointly with Kishor in the run-up to the polls, especially in the wake of growing support for AAP, which had won four Lok Sabha seats, sources said.

They said that Amarinder has been working with Kishor for some time and he is also learnt to have told the Congress not to contest the Khadoor Sahib bypolls in the state.

Congress has since decided not to contest the bypolls, despite the AICC having officially declared the candidature of sitting MLA Ramanjit Singh Sikki.

Sources said that Kishor has already started his work and is making an assessment of the ground situation along with surveys while formulating the party's strategy.

Kishor and the Citizens for Accountable Governance ( CAG), an election-campaign group he conceptualised, helped the Narendra Modi-led BJP win an absolute majority in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

In 2015, Kishor and some members of CAG regrouped as and started the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) and started working for the 2015 Bihar assembly election.

Working closely with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Kishor helped Kumar's "Grand Alliance" win the elections.