Old presentation mooting ‘non-Gandhi’ party chief goes viral amid buzz over Prashant Kishor’s Congress entry
Amid the growing buzz over the Congress willing to bring Prashant Kishor on board in its revival bid ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections, The Indian Express reports that the poll strategist had proposed to the party leadership last year that a non-Gandhi Congress president would have a “high” impact although the “visibility” of such an option is “difficult”.
The suggestion was reportedly part of a 85-page representation doing rounds on social media amid a renewed round of talks between Kishor and the Congress leadership on a revival roadmap for the party.
Kishor, however, told The Indian Express that it was n old/fake presentation (and) has nothing to do with the ongoing discussion.”
The Congress officially did not comment on it. A party leader, on condition of anonymity, said: “We have not seen any such presentation.” Another leader said “it can either be old or fake, it cannot be both.”
The purported presentation by Kishor suggests that the party leadership should take five “strategic decisions”: fix the leadership issue; solve the alliance conundrum; reclaim the party’s founding tenets; create an army of grassroots leaders and foot-soldiers; and an ecosystem of supportive media and digital propagation.
A senior leader told The Indian Express that this was a presentation Kishor had made to the Congress leadership last year and his current one is a version of this “with many additions and some deletions”. Sources said it does not have “anything like a non-Gandhi as party president.”
On the other hand, several other Congress leaders said that Kishor had, in private conversations, pitched the idea of a non-Gandhi as Congress president and Rahul Gandhi as leader of the party in Lok Sabha.
In the recent days, Kishor has held a series of meetings with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and other top party leaders, giving presentations on how to bring the party out of the crisis amid the unabated poll debacles and infightings in its state units, while focusing on resolving the issue of leadership vacuum.