india

Updated: Feb 22, 2020 06:50 IST

Political strategist Prashant Kishor can join the Aam Aadmi Party if he wants, senior party leader Sanjay Singh said on Friday. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had signed up with poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s I-PAC in the run-up to assembly poll, which he won comfortably and became the chief minister for the third time.

“If Prashant Kishor ji wants to join us, we have no objection. Now it is his decision whether to come or not,” Sanjay Singh told a news conference in Mumbai.

Prashant Kishor was sacked from the Janata Dal United last month after he spoke out against the party’s stand on the citizenship law. This week, he opened up about the circumstances that led to his exit and asserted that he had ideological differences with Nitish Kumar over his party’s partnership with the BJP.

Kishor had also spoken about the launch of a campaign, Baat Bihar Ki that seeks to tap the state’s youth power and underlined that he was not looking to get into any alliance to win or lose elections.

But he has been meeting opposition leaders in Bihar.

On Thursday, he met up with Hindustani Awam Morcha chief Jitan Ram Manjhi, who joined the JD(U) in 2005 and was handed the Bihar chief minister’s chair when Nitish Kumar picked him to replace himself after JD(U)’s poor show in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

A day earlier, Kishor had met RLSP chief Upendra Kushwaha, who was a minister in the BJP-led NDA government until his party pulled out of the coalition in December 2018.

Kushwaha , who has confirmed having met Kishor, was not forthcoming on what transpired. His party has a common ground with Kishor as the RLSP has been targeting the Bihar government led by Nitish Kumar for its performance on education, health, job and plight of farmers. “On an ideological plane, we are on the same page. The informal meeting revolved on Bihar’s development,” said Fazal Imam Mullick, former national office bearer of the party.

Prashant Kishor and the political consultancy firm that he founded have collaborated with leaders such as Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee and AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal, fuelling speculation about his political course in Bihar. For now, he has only made it clear that he was not thinking in terms of floating a new political party.