Bihar Elections: New Entrant Prashant Kishor Has History Of Designing Poll Campaigns — Here's His Scorecard
Prashant Kishor has returned to his home state of Bihar as a contender instead of a campaign designer.
Once identified as the brains behind successful electoral campaigns such as that of Narendra Modi's in the 2011 Gujarat elections, the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and Mamata Banerjee's 2021 West Bengal assembly elections win, Prashant Kishor has entered the playing field with his newly formed Jan Suraaj Party to contend in the forthcoming Bihar assembly polls on Nov. 6 and 11, 2025.
Kishor's electoral portfolio covers a wide range of ideologies on the Indian political spectrum. Kicking off his first major campaign with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2011, the strategist has also designed campaigns for the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress-Janata Dal (United) grand alliance that defeated the BJP in the 2015 Bihar polls after bagging 178 out of 243 seats in the state.
The JD(U) kicked him out in 2018, after appointing him as the vice-president on Oct. 16 in the same year.
Popular slogans such as 'Brand Modi' to 'Beta Kejriwal', 'Didi ke Bolo' for Banerjee to 'Halqe vich Captain' for Amarinder Singh, 'Jaganna's Navratnalu' for Jagan Mohan Reddy to 'Phir Se, Nitish' for Nitish, are all reported to be Kishor's brainchild.
Catapult To Fame
The year is 2014 and the coalition led by Modi's BJP has swept the Lok Sabha Polls against the coalition led by the Indian National Congress. What many might not have known about this victory is that Kishor had created campaigns and employed over 1,200 members to run Modi’s campaign across 13 states in the run-up to elections.
This is considered to be the kingmaker's catapult to fame, which helped him make headlines.
A List Of Wins, And A Fistful Of Losses
Kishor's creativity was also involved in other major political campaigns and has coined popular slogans such as "Lage Raho Kejriwal" for Aam Aadmi Party's Arvind Kejriwal. As a part of his run-up to the 2020 Delhi Assembly polls, wherein the AAP leader won after securing 62 out of 70 seats.
Further, the mastermind has had a hand in turning a new leaf for leaders like Chief Minister Amarinder Singh in Punjab after designing campaigns like "Coffee with Captain" and "Punjab da Captain"
Mamata Banerjee in 2021 secured a win on the back of Kishor's political consultancy firm Indian Political Action Committee or I-PAC devising the 'Didi Ke Bolo" (Tell Didi) campaign. She had approached Kishor after BJP's 2019 win.
Other successes on the campaign roster include names like Jagan Mohan Reddy for the 2019 Andhra Pradesh elections and DMK’s MK Stalin for 2021 Assembly election polls.
Besides the staggering list of wins, the apparent 'kingmaker' has also faced a fistful of prominent setbacks. In 2017, Kishor was responsible for designing a campaign for the Congress-Samajwadi tie-up, but failed to boost Akhilesh Yadav's and Rahul Gandhi's image with his "UP Ko Yeh Saath Pasand Hai" slogan; paving way for the BJP to sweep up a victory in Uttar Pradesh.
Kishor's Homecoming
At last, Prashant Kishor has returned to his home state Bihar as a contender instead of a campaign designer.
Even as Kishor's political strategy has taken a U-turn and become more focused on reforms instead of caste politics, many voices in the arena expect that his entry into politics will hardly make a dent because the power struggle in the state has been between Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar since 1995.
