'If I go, I will also drown,' says Prashant Kishor on working with Congress in future

After turning down an offer to join the Congress, poll strategist Prashant Kishor has ruled out a truck with the Grand Old Party.

On a tour in Bihar villages, Kishor said that the Congress would only go down and take everyone with itself. He also blamed the party for breaking his winning streak.

"In 2015, we won Bihar. In 2017, we won Punjab. In 2019, Jagan Mohan Reddy won in Andhra Pradesh. We won in Tamil Nadu and Bengal. In 11 years, we only lost one election... The 2017 Uttar Pradesh election. That is why I decided never to work with the Congress," Prashant Kishor, during a media interaction at Bihar’s Vaishaili to pay tribute to former Union Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh on May 31.

Kishor is on a tour in his home state Bihar as part of his ‘Jan Suraaj’ (good governance) campaign.

READ : Congress's Chintan Shivir failed to achieve anything : Prashant Kishor

"Abhi jo Congress ki vaivashta hai, voh aisi hai ki apne toh sudhrega nahi, humko bhi doboo degein (And the current Congress bosses are such that they will go down and take everyone with them. If I go, I will also drown)," he said.

Kishor, who negotiated with the Congress for a year and then declined the grand-old-party's offer to join the 'empowered group' for 2024 Lok Sabha polls, had last month predicted an “impending electoral rout” for the Congress in the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls scheduled for later this year.

He also said that recent barnstorming session 'Chintan Shivir' by the Congress party in Rajasthan's Udaipur did not achieve anything.

"I have been repeatedly asked to comment on the outcome of Udaipur Chintan Shivir. In my view, it failed to achieve anything meaningful other than prolonging the status-quo and giving some time to the Congress leadership, at least till the impending electoral rout in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh,” Kisor said in a tweet.

Kishor's comments come days after the Congress organised its three-day brainstorming session 'Nav Sankalp Chintan Shivir' in Udaipur to discuss the strategy for the upcoming assembly polls and 2024 general elections. The session was held on the backdrop of a string of electoral defeats and dissent in the Congress party, which saw a sharp decline in the last seven years.

Also, read | Prashant Kishor declines Congress offer to join 'empowered group' for 2024 Lok Sabha polls

Kishor, 45, is considered as the architect of several successful electoral campaigns over the past decade. He was associated with BJP stalwart Narendra Modi's maiden prime ministerial run in 2014, JD(U) patriarch Nitish Kumar's bid to retain chief ministership in Bihar in 2015, YSRCP chief Jagan Mohan Reddy's quest to wrest power in Andhra Pradesh in 2019 and, most recently, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee's campaign to win the third consecutive assembly elections in West Bengal in 2021.

Kishor has had meetings with the Gandhi family in 2020 as well on a possible tie-up for 2024, the strategist had revealed last year. But the talks did not sail through due to "differences" between the two sides, he had said.