Behind Congress' Punjab election win: Prashant Kishor's behind-the-scenes magic at display

With Kishor delivering Punjab to Amarinder, the election winning machine could strike gold

Prashant Kishor’s electioneering machine that worked behind the scenes for the Congress in Punjab has established itself in the domain of political consultancy as someone who knows how to win elections. Kishor, who enjoys cabinet minister status in Bihar, started it with ensuring a BJP victory in 2014 after which the juggernaut moved to Bihar where he helped Nitish Kumar retain power.

A part of this election machine is managed through Citizens Alliance Private Limited, a Delhi-based consultancy firm. But Kishor functions at an arms distance from the companies run by his associates. He is neither a shareholder nor a director in any of them. Citizens Alliance Private Ltd (CAP) is run by Shashank Mehta, who worked with Kishor on the BJP campaign.  Mehta along with others are also directors in the Association of Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG) that ran an aggressive campaign centered around PM Narendra Modi that ensured a BJP win in 2014.

They along with another company based in Patna called Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC) from the troika that may have signaled the advent of corporatisation of Indian elections. IPAC was behind Nitish’s winning campaign and is managing the Congress campaign in Punjab. Kishor turned his full energies towards Punjab after leaving the party’s campaign in UP reportedly due to differences with state leaders over his style of functioning. towards the end of 2016. Kishor was behind Rahul Gandhi’s Kisan Yatra across UP in October last year in which the Congress president became the first big leader to traverse the poll-bound state.  

Almost 65% of CAP’s project expenses of around Rs 5 crore was incurred on publicity, promotion, and media related activities. CAP that managed Nitish’s ‘Badh Chala Bihar’ outreach programme earned more than Rs 15 crore in revenues from two activities – manpower supply and project consulting and execution charges in 2015-16. CAP, which got a public relations contract from the Bihar government in 2015, has two other subsidiaries called the Joy of Giving Foundation and Citizens Ventures for Sustainable Solutions Private Limited. But the bulk of the political work that involves ensuring electoral victory for their political clients has been carried out by CAG and IPAC.

Kishor’s strategy seems to bear good results when he has a strong individual to weave campaigns around. In Punjab, the ‘Coffee with Captain’ campaign along with ‘Punjab da Captain’ revolving around Amarinder seems to have borne fruit. Such focused ground and social media campaigns mean expending considerable resources on them. For instance, CAG spent almost Rs 2 crore on just ‘Chai pe Charcha’ during the parliamentary elections that played around the theme that PM Modi was a tea-seller running for the country’s most powerful job. CAG’s total administrative expenses during the campaign was around Rs 3.5 crore.

It received ‘donations’ of almost Rs 8 crore and paid almost Rs 7 crore in stipends and professional fees to hundreds of volunteers who orchestrated the BJP’s winning campaign. ‘Chai pe Charcha’ was the rath-yatra equivalent of BJP’s campaign that helped create an aura around Modi that culminated in BJP’s resounding win.

IPAC, that won the Bihar elections for Nitish, has also established a corporate office in Mohali in Punjab. IPAC received Rs 19 crore in 2015-16 as project management and execution fees by doing “political consultancy”. IPAC, like CAG too incurred most of its expenses on hoardings, digital media advertisements, promotion and hiring volunteers for various campaigns in Bihar.  

But the benefits of winning an election for a powerful politician go just beyond such earnings. Kishor not just enjoys cabinet minister status in the Nitish government but has also been given charge to execute the ambitious Bihar Vikas Mission. The Rs 2.7 lakh crore programme seeks to implement Nitish’s ‘seven resolves’ which among other things include ramping up infrastructure, more investment in education and providing employment to Bihar’s youth. The mission has been hiring consultants, managers and assistant managers armed with MBA degrees in all 37 districts of Bihar to execute the project. It is one of the first experiments in creating a parallel technocracy to an existing bureaucracy in any state in India.

With Kishor delivering Punjab to Amarinder Singh, the election winning machine could strike gold in Punjab in the years to come.