After rounds of hectic parleys, Prashant Kishor declines Congress offer
NEW DELHI: The extended courtship between Prashant Kishor and the beleaguered Congress came to an end on Tuesday with public statements from both sides that it was over as the poll strategist declined an offer by the grand old party to join an empowered group of leaders for the 2024 general elections.
While the Congress thanked Kishor for his “effort and suggestions”, he said that more than him, the party needed “leadership and collective will to fix the deeprooted structural problems” in order to revive its fortunes.
People familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity that the deal fell through because of four reasons: Kishor’s insistence that he would only report to party president Sonia Gandhi; his demand for use of data in choice of candidates, which effectively meant a free hand; his view on alliances with regional parties; and his desire to focus on the parliamentary elections in 2024, not the state elections this year or next.
Tuesday’s developments came exactly 10 days after Kishor made a formal presentation to the Congress; almost daily consultations with the top leadership, including chief ministers who were flown down to Delhi to meet the poll strategist; and rampant speculation on what role he would be given in the party. Some Congress leaders, in private, expressed their dismay at the turn of events after what one of them termed as a “public spectacle”.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Congress said that Kishor turned down the party’s offer of joining as a member of the newly formed Empowered Action Group for the 2024 polls. “Following a presentation & discussions with Sh. Prashant Kishor, Congress President has constituted a Empowered Action Group 2024 & invited him to join the party as part of the group with defined responsibility. He declined. We appreciate his efforts & suggestion given to party,” said general secretary Randeep Surjewala in a tweet.
Soon after, the 45-year-old Kishor who, in his presentation, promised to improve the Congress’s chances in 2024 to a respectable 100-plus seats and defeating Narendra Modi by 2029, tweeted about the end of talks that had originally begun at the start of the pandemic in 2020.
“I declined the generous offer of #congress to join the party as part of the EAG & take responsibility for the elections. In my humble opinion, more than me the party needs leadership and collective will to fix the deep-rooted structural problems through transformational reforms,” he said, in a not-too-subtle reference to party’s inability to accept his demand for a complete overhaul of its organisation and reporting structure.
The two statements came after a meeting of the eight-member committee that was formed to look at his suggestions for change comprising P Chidambaram, AK Antony, Jairam Ramesh, Ambika Soni, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Mukul Wasnik, KC Venugopal and Surjewala.
Although Kishor refused to go beyond his tweet, he has always maintained that he cannot effectively help the Congress if he is not given a free hand. The formation of an Empowered Action Group, or EAG, which he was invited to join, meant that was not on the table. “The structure he was suggesting would have made many people within the EAG jobless and so, of course, they vetoed the idea,” said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named.
After the morning meeting, Kishor was formally invited to join as a member of this panel not reporting directly to the Congress chief, as he had wished. He was also told to first tackle the state elections such as the one in Gujarat later this year. And he wasn’t given control of the party’s communications.
One member of the eight-member panel told HT that the decision was “unanimous”, but other people familiar with the thinking in the party through the talks with Kishor said that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was initially very keen to accept his terms and that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were, as a result, open to the idea too.
What may have tipped the balance against the deal were happenings over the weekend, which Kishor spent in Hyderabad, even as the firm he founded, I-Pac, sealed an agreement to work with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi. While Kishor has repeatedly, since the West Bengal elections last year, distanced himself from his firm, the agreement with the TRS didn’t go well with the Congress. Manickam Tagore, a Congress leader widely seen to be close to Rahul Gandhi tweeted on Sunday: “Never trust someone who is friends with your enemy”, adding, “Is it correct?” Two of the people cited in first instance said Gandhi finally told Kishor that he could join party, but that the terms and conditions would be decided by the Congress, not dictated by him.
In his presentation, Kishor floated the idea of Congress-plus or alliances between the grand old party and regional parties, especially those with Congress origins. Kishor is believed to have mentioned his good relationship with TRS’s K Chandrashekar Rao; DMK’s MK Stalin; TMC’s Mamata Banerjee; and YSRCP’s Jagan Reddy, suggesting he could serve as the great unifier bringing parties opposing the BJP together. Not everyone was convinced that this was the preferred route to the party’s revival. “While we already have an alliance in TN, committee responded to his suggestion by saying that the Congress would be finished in Telangana, Bengal and Andhra, if we tied up with these parties,” said a third person cited in the first instance. “We knew that Jagan would only give us a handful of seats and same with KCR, so how is it a Congress revival?”
To be sure, the Congress won no assembly or Lok Sabha seats in Andhra, and just three of 17 LS seats and 19 out of 119 assembly seats in Telangana in the previous round of polls in the two states.
A fourth person cited in the first instance said that meeting some of Kishor’s expectations was simply out of the question. “Effectively, he would have had a say in who got the tickets, or what the strategy should be. This kind of power even the eight general secretaries don’t have,” explained this person. “Perhaps, this works in a smaller party like the TRS or even TMC. In Congress, we have a screening committee which then sends its recommendations to the Central Election Committee and then the final call is taken by Congress president. How can we get rid of all these?”
As a compromise, HT learns, the Congress finally suggested that Kishor become part of EAG, an offer he turned down.