What Prashant Kishor wanted from the Congress: 4 points
After Prashant Kishor announced that he will not be joining the Congress, he said more than him, the party needs ‘leadership and collective will to fix the deep-rooted structural problems through transformational reforms’.
After days of speculation and back-to-back meetings with the Congress top leadership, the deal which Prashant Kishor and the Grand Old Party were inches away to seal fell through. HT has learnt that there were primarily four reasons why the deal didn't materialise. Prashant Kishor wanted something while the Congress was believed to be sticking to its point, and the middle ground that both the sides tried to come to was not feasible finally.
Read: After rounds of hectic parleys, Prashant Kishor declines Congress offer
Here is what Prashant Kishor wanted
1. Prashant Kishor wanted to handle the entire communications and messaging. He wanted to access data to decide party tickets and strategy. This demand for an absolutely free hand did not go down well with the party. The Congress's sticking point was if PK gets to handle entire communications and ticket distribution, it may infringe on others' roles in the party, making PCC, CEC redundant.
2. Prashant Kishor wanted to report directly to party chief Sonia Gandhi, while the party wanted him to be part of the empowered action group.
3. Prashant Kishor wanted to form an alliance with regional parties. It has been learnt that PK wanted to lead alliance-formation talks with KCR, Jagan and Mamata as he felt it was necessary to defeat Modi. But the Congress thought such deals may be detrimental to the party's revival at the grassroots in different states.
4. PK wanted to focus on the Lok Sabha election 2024, but the Congress wanted him to focus on the state assembly elections scheduled this year and the next year.
Prashant Kishor's closeness with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in Telangana as I-Pac, the firm founded by him, will now be working with the TRS might also be another factor for Congress's unwillingness. TRS working president and Telangana minister KT Rama Rao has recently commented that Congress is a redundant institution. "We do not have any relation with Congress. It is a redundant institution. The people of India gave them a chance to rule for more than 50 years in the last 75 years. The country has been let down by the Congress and the BJP," KTR said.
