Amid reports that Mamata Banerjee has roped in India’s new age election guru Prashant Kishor to revive her party Trinamool Congress’ electoral fortunes in Bengal, the poll strategist has kick-started a grand plan to enroll at least 5 lakh youth in his “youth in politics” campaign.
These youth, thus drafted in politics will augment a befuddled TMC’s worker force. The Bengal ruling outfit suffered stunning reverses at the hands of a surging BJP in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections whence the saffron party romped home with 18 out of 42 seats leaving 22 for the Trinamool and two for the Congress. In its worst defeat since 2006 the TMC conceded 12 seats to the Opposition.
Assembly segment-wise the Lok Sabha election results projected a whopping gain of 127 seats for the BJP in a 294-member House whereas the TMC’s strength hovered around 155 and 160, down 55-60 seats from its 2016 tally.
Considering a general perception that Bengal ruling party had degenerated into a criminalised outfit, Kishor is working on an image-building exercise. Recruitment and training of clean, well-cultivated and untested faces is a part of his programme, sources said.
Kishor’s organisation I-PAC is targeting all classes of youth; but mostly the unemployed ones, sources said adding his recruitment programme is called “Youth in Politics” or YIP. Even those who have voted for the BJP or admire Narendra Modi are welcome in the YIP, sources said adding the group has already started enrolling about 4 thousand youth per day. This rate of enrolment is expected to rise further until it reaches 10,000 per day sources said adding by the end of September the number of people thus recruited would go up to five lakh.
These people will then be trained for a period of 15 months or so before they are pushed into the market for election works, sources said. The team will also analyse if any particular caste, tribal, Hindi-speaking or industrial belts in the state had any role in the vote-share swing.
While similar strategy of enrolling foot-soldiers worked well in the case of Andhra Pradesh where Kishor worked for Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress to trounce Chandrababu Naidu, this may not work in Bengal as here he has to withstand the anti-incumbency wave against the Mamata Banerjee Government that was witnessed in the general elections.
“We could have won at least 2-3 more seats like Arambagh and Ghatal had the Election Commission managed to control violence unleashed by the TMC goons,” said State BJP president Dilip Ghosh adding, “BJP has a connect with the masses and Mamata Banerjee has lost that connect which is why she has to purchase an election expert. But she will have to remember that Bengal has a politically conscious and matured electorate unlike in many parts of India. Here professional electioneering will not work.”
Even if the YIP “or whatever they are called moves door-to-door will they be able to erase the impression of a frightful decade a corrupt decade, a criminalised decade from their mind?” another State BJP leader wondered.
Already Kishor has met Banerjee several times and has been working in close coordination with her nephew and MP Abhishek Banerjee.
Kishor’s endeavour in Bengal is part of a multi-crore contract with the TMC, inside sources said, adding the election guru — responsible for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s landslide victory in 2014 — will also have to watch out for the source of the payment that comes to him as contract fee from the TMC, a galaxy of whose leaders
are facing a slew of charges for their alleged involvement in chit fund and other corrupt activities.
