‘Kishor’s I-PAC is working on a national campaign for a national political party’.
Political strategist Prashant Kishor Pandey and his firm Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) have started working on a “national campaign” for a national political party, the identity of which, as of now, is only known to Kishor and the three director level officers of I-PAC.
Kishor, who has earlier worked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when he was the Gujarat Chief Minister, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, is presently assisting Jagan Mohan Reddy and his party YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh.
According to sources, the recruitment process for this national campaign has already been started and the existing 200 team members of I-PAC, who were based in various districts of Andhra, have been asked to report to Hyderabad, except those who are well versed in Telugu. The Telugu fluent volunteers will stay back in Andhra Pradesh and continue to assist Jagan. The rest, according to sources, will be moved to the national capital for further deployment. An office site is also being scouted for the same in Noida.
This 200 plus I-PAC team members include around 50 who had worked with Prashant Kishor in Bihar, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh and are well versed with I-PAC’s functioning.
“We are already working on the campaign, during which concept notes and PowerPoint presentations, which are useful and applicable across the country, are being prepared. As is the practice, the identity of the party/individual for whom we are working will only be revealed to us at a very later stage,” one of the 200 members of I-PAC told The Sunday Guardian.
The expenses for a pan-India campaign for which the I-PAC has been engaged, according to sources, can only be borne by a national party like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is in power in more than 20 states, and if Prashant Kishor returns to the BJP fold, this will be a sort of “ghar-wapsi” for him as he had begun professional election management first for Narendra Modi. Although there is also specualtion if the party is Congress.
Apart from members of the core team, I-PAC will also appoint an “area resource manager” in every district of the country as a part of this national campaign. These managers will be appointed for a short period of time and will act as I-PAC’s points man in a district. Sources within the I-PAC said that the BJP already has an in-house team of professionals who assist the party in election campaigning on the lines of what Kishor does, unlike during the 2014 elections, when the party had no such professionals, and hence it was not clear what would be the role of the I-PAC in the current scheme of things, if it is engaged by the BJP.
The Sunday Guardian’s queries to Prashant Kishor on whether, or not, he was going to assist the BJP in its campaigning did not elicit any response.