Man Behind PM Narendra Modi"s "Chai Pe Charcha" in Talks to Join Team Nitish Kumar

Patna / Ahmedabad:  Prashant Kishor – a 37-year-old who flew in a few years ago from Africa to become a key member of the Narendra Modi campaign strategy team – has been spotted in Bihar, where elections will be held in a few months from now.

But Mr Kishor is reportedly not laying the ground for a new, innovative campaign for the Prime Minister. He trended on Twitter this morning after reports that he will be working on the campaign of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, whose rivalry with PM Modi is legendary.

Mr Kishor is credited with thinking up the wildly successful ‘chai pe charcha‘ campaign for Mr Modi last year, turning a generic outreach programme at the last minute into a branded activity, after Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar made a comment on Mr Modi’s days as a young tea-seller on trains.    

The Bihar elections pit Nitish Kumar in a direct confrontation with Mr Modi’s BJP.

Pavan Verma of the Janata Dal (United), a close aide of Nitish Kumar said today, “As and when Mr Kishor joins us we will welcome him most gladly.  He has expressed a desire to work with a leader of the future and stature like Nitish Kumar. He is so well versed in social media that he is an asset for whoever he works with.”

Prashant Kishor set up the Citizens for Accountable Governance which leveraged social media to project and popularise Narendra Modi as the face of good governance for 2012 Gujarat elections and later the national elections.  

As a key ideator for the Modi campaign, Mr Kishor put together a team of professionals, mostly MBAs and Ivy League and IIT graduates, many of who quit plum jobs to join him.   

Mr Kishor, who worked as a health official in the United Nations, had quit to join Mr Modi’s team after meeting him in 2011.

He worked behind the scenes and behind the headlines, rarely featured in the many articles about Mr Modi’s electric campaign.