Prashant Kishor the poll strategist is the only hope for the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi here at Uttar Pradesh. Prashant is not doing anything new, but he is making the Congress leaders run from pillar to post and campaign for the party. Rahul Gandhis Khat per Charcha has brought some movement in the campaign but so far there is no candidate who would come and say that he would definitely win the election.
In far-flung villages in Uttar Pradesh, villagers had not heard of PK, but they knew about the loan waiver promise. Many even recalled that the Congress had waived loans in 2008 — and so it was a possibility, that they would do it again if voted to power.
Though the Congress is being talked of — more where there is a credible candidate — no one is yet saying it has a chance of winning the election.
But everyone agrees that its vote percentage will increase and that it will get more than the 28 seats it won in 2012. And if it doesn’t help the party in 2017, there will be a party organisation for the battle of 2019, the next Lok Sabha elections, is the consensus.
Even senior Congress leaders who insist that political planning, concept and strategy has been left to them, are reluctantly admitting that PK has made an impact: a former MP says “He is not doing anything that we could not have done — but we were not doing it. There is so much factionalism and rivalry that we needed an outsider to state the obvious and carry it through.”
