Alarmed by the rise of the BJP in the state, as evident in the number of Lok Sabha seats bagged by them, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has allegedly hired the services of renowned poll strategist Prashant Kishor for the upcoming West Bengal assembly elections. However, Bengal is expected to go to polls in 2021, two years away from now.
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Election strategist Prashant Kishor met TMC chief Mamata Banerjee today and agreed to work with her to once again propel Trinamool Congress party to form a government in the state. After almost a two-hour meet, Mamata Banerjee signed up the poll strategist to put up a fight against the rising BJP. He will officially start working with Mamata Banerjee after one month.
The party is facing tough headwinds from the saffron party which is rapidly growing in the state. The BJP in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections won 18 Lok Sabha seats out of the total 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. Large swathes of the crowd have been seen thronging the rallies of senior BJP leaders such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, hinting at the support the party is enjoying among the masses in the state.
Perhaps, the recent rise of the BJP in Bengal dictates Mamata Banerjee’s precocious measures in employing poll strategist Prashant Kishor almost two years before the assembly elections. West Bengal is Mamata’s turf and she is visibly rattled that an ‘outsider’ is not only challenging her on home turf but is even capable of pulling off a victory if not dealt with on an urgent basis.
Prashant Kishor has a mixed record as an election strategist. Though he had been exceptionally outstanding in Modi’s victory in 2014 and Nitish Kumar’s triumph in the 2015 Bihar elections, he terribly failed 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, election strategist Kishor made an instrumental role in Jagan Mohan Reddy’s sweep in Andhra Pradesh elections.