Prashant Kishor declines offer to join Congress

Poll strategist Prashant Kishor will not join the Congress, party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala announced on Twitter. “Following a presentation & discussions with Sh. Prashant Kishor, Congress President, has constituted an Empowered Action Group 2024 & invited him to join the party as part of the group with defined responsibility. He declined. We appreciate his efforts & suggestion given to party,” Surjewala tweeted.

“I declined the generous offer of #congress to join the party as part of the EAG & take responsibility for the elections. In my humble opinion, more than me, the party needs leadership and collective will to fix the deep-rooted structural problems through transformational reforms,” Kishor said in a tweet, minutes after Surjewala’s announcement. Prashant Kishor met the party leadership, including interim chief Sonia Gandhi, earlier this month and presented a blueprint for the 2024 elections, sparking rumours that the master strategist will join the party as a leader to steer it out of the string of election debacles. Sonia Gandhi, following the meeting with Kishor, set up an eight-member panel to study his recommendations and prepare a report, following which an “Empowered Action Group-2024” was formed to address the political challenges and discuss an organizational overhaul. Prashant Kishor, during his association with I-PAC, had crafted poll campaigns for the Congress in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.