Political analyst and strategist Prashant Kishor will not be joining the Congress, the party’s media cell chief Randeep Surjewala said on Tuesday, April 26. Hectic parlays had been underway between Kishor and the Congress in the past few days, with the political party hoping to bring Kishor onboard with an eye on the 2024 General elections. Now, the Congress has said that Kishor has declined the party invite.
“Following a presentation & discussions with Sh. Prashant Kishor, Congress President has constituted an Empowered Action Group 2024 & invited him to join the party as part of the group with defined responsibility. He declined. We appreciate his efforts & suggestions given to the party,” Surjewala tweeted.
The Congress had approached Kishor to be a part of its new Empowered Action Group to prepare for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Party leaders had admitted that there is no harm in the political strategist joining the party, but there should be no conflict wherever the party is pitched against regional forces.
Kishor met Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi multiple times over the past week. However, Congress leaders had expressed concern over the agreements Kishor had signed to support rivals in West Bengal, Bihar and Telangana. A top Congress source told TNM that the main problem was a ‘trust deficit’. There were also a few suggestions that Prashant Kishor put forward which the Congress felt could not be implemented at any cost and would have led to friction within the party. For example, one of the suggestions made by Prashant Kishor is that those above 70 years of age should not contest and only one ticket per family.
Prashant Kishor had made a presentation to the Congress and suggested that the party should do programs to connect with the masses and improve its communications. One of the suggestions that he put forward was to strengthen the post of the Congress President.
Recently, Prashant Kishor met Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and TRS Working President KT Rama Rao. After a weekend meeting with the father-son duo, an official announcement was made that Prashant Kishor and I-PAC would be working with the party, towards achieving KCR’s goals of a federal front. There were doubts raised as to how Prashant Kishor could work with the Congress and the TRS at the same time. However, the source told TNM that this was not the reason for Prashant's Kishor decision to not join the party.
With inputs from Dhanya Rajendran