Keeping the recent election drubbing in mind, poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who is now associated with Trinamool Congress, is eyeing the 2021 Assembly elections in West Bengal. Understanding Mamata Banerjee’s predicaments, Kishor has started mobilizing his efforts for the same two years in advance.
With an aim to expand TMC’s base in the state, which is almost going through an existential crisis, Kishor has launched the ‘Youth in Politics’ initiative, reports Zee News.
Kishor, who joined Banerjee’s brigade last month, plans to bring in 5 lakh youngsters to join politics as a part of this initiative. His team is reportedly registering at least five thousand youngsters per day to join politics. The team eventually aims to increase the daily count of registrations to ten thousand.
Kishor and team intend to create the database of five lakh people by September this year. Thereafter, training will be imparted over a period of 15 months. As per the initiative, anyone can take the training and choose to be associated with whichever political party they want.
Though these registrations are not directly taking place under the TMC banner, Kishor’s team is hopeful fresh five lakh faces in politics will be an additional force for the party in the coming days.
TMC has been promoting the ‘Youth in Politics’ initiative actively across their social media handles.
Last month, there were speculations that TMC supremo Banerjee, spooked by BJP’s implausible inroads in West Bengal, had decided to hire services of renowned poll strategist Prashant Kishor almost two years ahead of the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections.
After reports confirming that poll strategist had agreed to work for TMC started doing the rounds, JD(U) had distanced itself from the Kishor. JD(U) had on June 7, disowned Kishor, merely eight months after inducting him as the party’s National Vice-President.
According to reports, however, Kishor is unlikely to be the face of TMC campaign in the state. His team is specifically looking into the reasons behind the shift of vote bank from Left to BJP and the region-specific reasons behind BJP’s vote share increase in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election.
Kishor has a mixed record as an election strategist. Though he was associated with Modi’s outstanding victory in 2014 and Nitish Kumar’s triumph in the 2015 Bihar elections, he failed terribly in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in 2017 where Yogi Adityanath trounced his clients Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Most recently, Kishor played an instrumental role in Jagan Mohan Reddy’s sweep in Andhra Pradesh elections.
