With the crucial assembly elections close at hand in Bihar, Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) president and acclaimed poll strategist Prashant Kishor has called it quits as the political consultant preparing the electoral roadmap for the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) of actor-turned neta Vijay.
Only in February this year, Kishor had shared the dais with Vijay at the TVK’s second anniversary celebrations and it was announced with great expectations that he would work as the key poll strategist of the party for the 2026 assembly elections. For his part, Kishor too said that he was happy to work with the hugely popular actor on taking the political plunge. Further, he expressed confidence that brother Vijay would campaign for him in Bihar. “My brother Vijay will also campaign for me and the JSP in the Bihar elections,” he had said then.
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However, a day after the TVK declared Vijay as its Chief Ministerial candidate, sources in the party said that Kishor had withdrawn from his role as political strategist citing his hectic preoccupations in his home state due to the upcoming assembly elections on which the JSP chief is concentrating its energy. However, they hoped it was only a pause as he might return to continue the work. Kishor himself had said that he might consider joining team Vijay in November.
When Kishor was roped in by the TVK, it was seen as a strategic move by Vijay who is keen on positioning himself as the alternative to the DMK and Stalin.
At the TVK’s state executive committee meeting on Friday, he had asserted that the TVK will not align with either the DMK or the principal opposition AIADMK, which has returned to the BJP-led NDA fold. “We will form an alliance under the leadership of the TVK.
There is no possibility of joining an alliance either directly or indirectly with the BJP, a divisive force and our ideological enemy. We are very clear and firm on this. We are not like the DMK or the AIADMK which are ready to play ball with the BJP,” he had said.
Lashing out at the Sangh Parivar for debunking and ridiculing Dravidian icons, rationalist social reformer ‘Periyar’ EV Ramasamy, and ‘Anna’ CN Annadurai, the late Dravidian stalwart at the Murugan conference in Madurai and warned that the BJP could never succeed in the Tamil land by insulting those highly respected leaders.
“This is a land where self-respect and communal harmony are deeply entrenched. The crass divisive communal politics of the BJP might bring it dividends elsewhere but will not cut ice in Tamil Nadu,” he asserted.