Prashant Kishor breaks four-month silence; congratulates 'BJP-nominated' CM Nitish Kumar

Breaking his media silence after 4 months, ex-JDU Vice-President Prashant Kishor on Monday, congratulated Nitish Kumar on being sworn-in as Chief Minister for the seventh time. Terming Nitish Kumar as a 'BJP-nominated CM', the poll strategist said that Bihar must brace itself for 'years of lacklustre governance'. Kishor was dubiously silent throughout the Bihar poll campaign, with speculations rife that he had aided LJP chief Chirag Paswan's decision to split from the NDA.

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Kishor's 'Baat Bihar Ki'

Days after being expelled from JDU for 'anti-party activities', Kishor launched his 'Baat Bihar ki' campaign where he  slammed CM Nitish Kumar for standing with "Godse supporters". Slamming the Modi-Shah duo a number of times during his announcement, Kishor went on to say that 'Twitter is not a luxury' that only "Gujarat people" can use. Ironically, Kishor was the BJP's poll strategist during the 2014 Lok Sabha and spearheaded the 'Ab ki Baar Modi Sarkar' campaign which led to the 'Modi wave'.

While he promised to work on 'grass-level' leadership in Bihar, leading to the Bihar polls, since the on-set of Coronavirus, Kishor was conspicuously absent and silent on Twitter. While Nitish Kumar had hinted at Kishor's hand behind Paswan's move to split from the NDA - hurting his party's campaign on 32 seats, Paswan himself denied this. Kishor, who has a tendency to pick the 'winning side' in poll campaigns, is currently involved in DMK chief M K Stalin's maiden CM campaign for Tamil Nadu polls and Mamata Banerjee's re-election bid in Bengal polls.

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Prashant Kishor and Bihar

Prashant Kishor - who has been credited for engineering the Mahagathbandhan - had worked with Nitish Kumar for his election campaign in 2015. Later in September 2018, on the advice of then BJP chief Amit Shah, Kishor was inducted as the vice president of Nitish Kumar's JDU. Following his induction in 2019, the JDU fared extremely well in the Lok Sabha polls along with ally BJP, completely decimating Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD.

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After the Central government passed the contentious citizenship amendment act in December, Kishor openly spoke against the BJP. He not only questioned the former BJP chief Amit Shah but went on submit his resignation, which sources said was rejected by Nitish Kumar. However, after warning Kishor for his anti-party statements, Kumar finally expelled him from the party. Since then RJD has sent multiple feelers to Kishor to join them, but he is yet to respond.

Kishor's successful poll campaigns include then-Gujarat CM Modi's 2012 election bid and Modi's debut PM bid in 2014. Kishor helped Congress' Capt Amarinder Singh win Punjab Assembly polls in 2017 and Jagan Mohan Reddy win his maiden CM term in 2019. After falling out with the Modi-Shah duo in 2019, the poll strategist helped Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal secure a fourth term.