Popular political strategist and founder of the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), Prashant Kishor, seems to have backtracked on his predictions for the assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Andhra Pradesh.
Until recently, he had been telling media houses that the YSR Congress Party, led by Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, was going to lose significantly in the assembly elections due to his faulty policies.
He even told popular news anchor V. Ravi Prakash in an interview on the latter’s digital channel that the number of seats for the YSRCP would drop from 151 in the 2019 elections to just 51 seats this time.
However, in an interview with national news reporter Barkha Dutt, he stated that there was no point in arguing about the number of seats the YSRCP would win, as it would be known by June 4.
He was responding to Jagan’s claim that his party would get more seats than it did in 2019, when Prashant Kishor was leading I-PAC and strategizing for the YSRCP.
“I am very cautious in predicting the exact number of seats any political party will win. I rarely predict the number of seats. In Andhra Pradesh, I can only say that Jagan is going to lose, and I don’t want to predict the numbers,” he said.
He added that if his predictions were wrong, he would face severe backlash.
“If my predictions come true, the backlash will be on Jagan, as it was on Amit Shah in West Bengal in 2021,” he said.
Prashant, however, said there was nothing wrong with Jagan claiming that his party would get more seats than in 2019.
“Even Chandrababu Naidu will claim his party would get 150 seats. So will Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi, and Tejaswi Yadav,” he said.
“Even on polling day, when a particular political party is trailing after the fourth round, the party chief will not concede defeat but will say there are still a few more rounds to go and his party will emerge victorious,” he pointed out.
