Patna: Strategist Prashant Kishor who helped the Mahagathbandhan to trounce the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar Assembly polls will be inducted as advisor to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Prashant Kishor has been appointed as advisor to the CM for Planning and Programme Implementation, a notification issued by state Cabinet Coordination Committee last night said.
He would have a status of cabinet minister and get allowance of that level, the notification bearing signature of Principal Secretary Cabinet Coordination Department Brajesh Mehrotra stated.
In the present role, Kishor would have the responsibility to formulate plan and Kishor, the poll strategist was the main force behind Kumar's campaign strategy in Bihar.
Incidentally, Kishor was one of the key backroom players for Narendra Modi when he was the chief minister of Gujarat, and also when he was running as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate.
Prashant Kishor, a native of Bihar, had quit a UN health expert's job in Africa in 2011 and returned to India to form a group of young professionals who devised the strategy to project Modi as the face of good governance in the 2012 Gujarat polls and last year's general elections with resounding success.
Kishor, 37, who conceptualised and implemented Modi's popular 'chai pe charcha' initiative, substituted it with 'parcha pe charcha' (discussion over pamphlets) under which Nitish's poll managers sought feedbak from people on the state government's performance over the past decade.
Realising that the JD(U) cannot match the resources of BJP, Kishor's team also devised the 'Har Ghar Dastak' (knock on every door) that helped the party establish a personal connect with the masses.
When top BJP leaders were busy criss-crossing Bihar on helicopters, Nitish Kumar and workers of his party went knocking the doors of the electorate seeking their vote as part of the direct outreach initiative.
When asked why he switched over to Modi's rival, Kishor said," Nitish Kumar is one of the country's most credible politicians."
The usually "laconic" Kumar, members of Kishor's team said, was hardly a talking point when the team landed in Patna. Working assiduously behind the scene, they crafted a strategy where Kumar matched Modi's each trenchant criticism with equally sharp retort.
Kishor had brought together a group of graduates from India's premier institutes and multinational companies to work on Modi's 2014 election campaign under the name 'Citizens for Accountable Governance'. He dissolved CAG a few months after the elections. Kishor heads Indian Political Action Committee ( IPAC), led by a young team of technocrats.
