NEW DELHI: The Bihar elections were defined by two battles. The first everyone knew – the bareknuckle fight between Narendra Modi versus Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad Yadav combine. But below the radar, the elections were as much a fight between BJP President Amit Shah and one Prashant Kishor , a former Modi strategist who earlier this year joined Nitish Kumar as the grand alliance’s main strategist.The grand alliance’s thumping victory on Sunday will be a sweet moment for Kishor, made especially satisfying by the realisation that he had beaten Shah fairly and squarely, and in the process earning a reputation of being India’s first major political consultant of sorts. Someone who has brought to electioneering in the country tools and techniques more identified with US campaigns.As the Grand Alliance savoured its victory and the Bihar chief minister publicly hugged Kishor on Sunday, acknowledging his critical role in the alliance’s performance, it revealed a contrast with what happened in the BJP after the last general elections. While Kishor felt that it was he and his team that had a key role in catapulting Modi to power, with his social media outreach, repackaging of Modi as a development icon, Chai Pe Charcha programmes and 3D holograms that broadened the then Gujarat CM’s reach, many in the party felt otherwise. People familiar with what happened at that time said Shah and other senior leaders were of that opinion that Kishore’s contribution was in providing the frills while the core was provided by the party and its cadres.Soon after the general elections, Kishor, 37, who had junked his job as a public health specialist with the UN in Africa to work pro-bono for Modi before the 2012 assembly elections, lost any influence in the BJP’s election strategising. A person close to Shah told ET that Kishor had met him in the last leg of general elections in 2014 and gently inquired what would happen post June. Shah is said to have told Kishore that “after June there is July”. He did not provide any assurance on whether there would be a role for Kishore in government policy making and only said that he would be compensated for his services. This account is, however, repudiated by people close to Kishor. “Prashant had direct access to the PM, Why would he speak to Shah about anything?” said one person.In any case, the seeming absence of an equation between the powerful BJP president and Kishor contributed to the latter’s estrangement. Kishor had no role in the string of assembly elections that followed the May 2014 elections, and the BJP’s strong showing in all of them under Shah’s charge cemented the impression that it was after all the party and not Kishor and his army of computer and smartphone wielding professionals that had clinched the earlier victory too.Kishor fell out with the party and for many months after was in political wilderness. He reached out to some senior Congress leaders, and later approached Kumar in October-November of 2014, with author, former diplomat and JD(U) MP Pavan Varma acting aas a go-between. After several rounds of meetings between them, Kishor met Nitish in Delhi for final negotiations. As they sealed a deal, Kishor put two conditions to Kumar -- he would work on the Bihar campaign only if he had unfettered access to the JD(U) leader and that Jitan Ram Manjhi had to be removed as the Bihar CM. Manjhi had been appointed CM by Kumar after the Lok Sabha election wipeout.Shortly after that meeting, Kumar removed Manjhi, reinstalled himself and Kishor then moved into the chief minister’s 7 Circular Road Bungalow in Patna, much like how he operated out of Modi’s Gandhinagar residence when he worked for him. His team too started working for Kumar and his organisation Citizens for Accountable Governance, a US-style style Political Action Committees that acted as a major force multiplier to the Modi campaign in 2014, metamorphosed into Indian People’s Action Committee (IPAC). As elections drew near, they got to work and Kumar’s campaign style started changing. The chief minister, who once derisively referred to Twitter as chidiya, was soon on the microblogging platform and undertook a mass contact program with voters as the new team of advisers brought about messaging discipline and deployed tactics and tools never before used by the parties steeped in socialist political conduct.Along the way, Kishor, a native of Bihar himself, too underwent a makeover. From blue jeans and fitted t-shirts to a white linen kurta pyjama, but his iPad and iPhone remain firmly by his side on an uncluttered desk. “Nitish has changed Prashant’s clohes and Prashant has changed Nitish’s glasses,” one political observer in Patna remarked wryly.And it’s not just Nitish that Kishor shares a good rapport. He shares a very warm relationship with Lalu too, according to people in the RJD. A story doing the rounds in Patna’s political circles is how Lalu in one meeting told his sons, Tejasvi and Tej: “Yeh panditji hain. Inka pair chuho aur agar hum na rahein to hamesha inki salah lena (He is a wise man. You must touch his feel and even when I am not around, you must always take his advice).”This was in stark contrast with his experience in the BJP. Shortly after the BJP was routed in the Delhi assembly elections by the Aam Admi Party (AAP), Kishor, accordingly to people privy to the meeting, had met the PM and warned him to not take the Delhi loss lightly. “The coterie around the PM had convinced him the Delhi loss was an aberration,” said one person.Even when Kishor decided to jump ship to the Nitish camp, the PM reached out to him and urged him to change his mind. Modi was keen to retain Kishor, people close to him said. “But others in the party thought Kishor had nothing further to contribute.”Meanwhile, with Nitish Kumar, who with his recent victory could potentially become the face of a combined opposition against the BJP and Modi, the relationship promises to be more than a one-off engagement. “Prashant Bihar ka hain aur ab vo Bihar wapas aa gaye hain. Aur election ke baad Bihar ke liye aur bhi bahut karenge,” Kumar told ET in an interview with ET last month.Before that happens, Kishor’s immediate priority is to hit the gym and maybe even take a vacation with his family. In the days before the results, Kishore had remarked to many people that if the alliance secured less than 145 seats he would give up election management. For now, it will be vacation over Vanvaas.