Election strategist Prashant Kishore has a new client. This time, it is the Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
On Thursday, Kishore, vice president of JD(U), met Mamata Banerjee and her nephew and MP, Abhishek Banerjee, at the state secretariat in Nabanna. They held a meeting for more than one-and-half hours. However, neither party—Kishore or the TMC—revealed the details of their 'agreement'.
But the sudden development has raised many eyebrows, especially considering the fact that this is the first time a mass leader in Bengal, like Banerjee, has sought help from a poll strategist to win an assembly election, which is still two years away. So, the question is is Mamata Banerjee worried?
No mass leader in India, who hailed from their particular regions, in the past ever took help of high-tech poll strategists, who never did politics in their life but are equivalent to management gurus.
Many political observers believe that mass leaders never need any help from poll strategists to win elections. Perhaps, Narendra Modi was the first to bring such a concept into Indian elections when he employed Kishore for his high-decibel campaign on and off social media in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Kishore earned acclaim, but perhaps little more than what he deserved, believed political scientists. Modi had perhaps underestimated himself and did not have enough confidence in his own popularity. His second win without Kishore proved that Modi won not because of Kishore but because of his charisma.
“He will lose if he cannot retain the charisma. In the same way, Nitish Kumar lacked confidence to take on the mighty Modi brigade even after an alliance with Lalu Prasad Yadav. So, Kishore was the helping hand for Nitish to win (Bihar) election. But the way the two socialists joined hands, they could have easily won. No strategist is required in states like Bihar where a social media campaign has limited access," said Sidhartha Dasgupta, a professor of political science in Kolkata.
Kishore failed in Uttar Pradesh where he assisted the Congress party in the 2017 assembly elections. No strategist can make a party win through social media campaign if the party has no organisational strength. That same year, Kishore helped captain Amarinder Singh wrest control of Punjab and very recently, the YSRCP employed his services. The BJP routed its political opponents in 2017 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, but Amarinder Singh won comfortably.
It can be argued that both Amarinder and the YSRCP took advantage of anti-incumbency in their respective states to come to power and Kishore had nothing to do with it.
With his arrival in Kolkata, Kishore has raised doubts in the minds of TMC supporters and workers, which is very obvious. Is Mamata also lacking confidence like other leaders in different parts of India who took Kishore's help?
The lack of confidence comes from the fact that the BJP has not only become the number two party in West Bengal, it almost touched the same vote share of the Trinamool Congress in the Lok Sabha election. The state, which had never sent more than two BJP MPs to the Lok Sabha, sent 18 MPs of the saffron party to Delhi this year. And these MPs won from north to south to east and to the western part of the state. More so, the BJP is re-energised in West Bengal and has responded to the "big brother attitude" of the TMC in every corner of the state with the same intensity.
Speculations are rife that Kishore was also roped in to tackle the erosion of TMC cadre to the BJP at the ground level. The leaders and cadres support Trinamool Congress solely because of Mamata Banerjee, whose party is nothing but an army with one commander. So when the supreme leader takes help, it appears to the cadre that all is not well with the party.
In recent days, the chief minister looked tense and seemed irritated by hearing Jai Shri Ram slogans by BJP supporters. Banerjee used the Eid platform to admonish the BJP and threatened it with "dire consequences if it at all tried to take on her in Bengal". The BJP workers challenging her on the streets with Jai Shri Ram slogans not only irked Banerjee, it made her worry about whether her support bases are receding.
Kishore would visit the state shortly with his team and travel across the state. He will then submit a report to Banerjee on what is to be done and what is not to be done.
Another factor that created murmurs was whether Kishore, being a senior party man of the JD(U), got sanction from his party boss Nitish Kumar to come to Kolkata to help Banerjee. The Nitish-Modi relationship has reportedly experienced turbulence in recent weeks over the allocation of ministerial berths to JD(U) in the NDA government. Many see Kishore's visit as a defiant reaction to Modi and the BJP by Nitish.
If it is so, the NDA is heading for another face-off in the days to come. The crack will be wide open once the honeymoon period of the new Modi government is over.
