The Congress has dismissed the latest set of advice and criticism from poll strategist Prashant Kishor, saying the consultants' comments require no comment. Mr Kishor, in a wide-ranging interview with the Press Trust of India yesterday, had given a checklist for the party and its senior leader Rahul Gandhi, which also included advice that he should step aside if the party did not perform well.
Asked about Mr Kishor's comments today, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said, “I don't answer comments made by advisors. Talking about political people, what is there to answer about advisors?”
In an interaction with PTI, Mr Kishor said that for all practical purposes, Mr Gandhi has been leading the party for a decade and has not been able to deliver results or step aside.
“If you have been doing the same job for the past ten years without any success, there is no harm in taking a break,” Mr Kishor had said. “You'd have to let someone else do it for five years. Your mother did it,” he said, pointing to the time when Sonia Gandhi, after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, had left party affairs to PV Narasimha Rao in 1991.
The poll strategist, seen as a stern critic of the Congress, said Gandhi's practice of running the show is “also anti-democratic”. Mr Kishor, who launched the winning campaign led by Amarinder Singh in 2017, had also come up with a revival plan for the Congress but walked out over differences with party leaders over its implementation.
After a decade of UPA rule, the Congress has entered a downward spiral, with the party's number of seats, national vote share and its presence and strength in states rapidly declining.
After its victory in Karnataka last year, Mr Kishor had advised the Congress not to “confuse the Assembly election results with a hint of what lies ahead in the Lok Sabha polls”.
Mr Kishor formally retired as poll strategist after the 2021 Bengal assembly elections, with his client Mamata Banerjee posting her best-ever performance.