NEW DELHI: Attempting a strong comeback after Congress’ embarrassing loss in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand assembly elections, poll strategist Prashant Kishor is exploring an entry into Tamil Nadu’s political arena.Confirming preliminary talks with Kishor’s Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), DMK insiders maintained that nothing was concrete yet. Sources in the cross-party advocacy group told ET that I-PAC was yet to take a call on the political leader whose project it would ultimately take up. These people described I-PAC’s foray into Tamil Nadu as a “research work” to “understand the state’s political landscape”, saying political options were being explored.I-PAC has sought applications from TN’s youngsters to be hired as ‘constituency managers’ and ‘political media managers’ — the former will “manage election campaign for a constituency” and the latter will “develop media feedback structure for campaigns”. I-PAC had earlier invited such applications in Andhra too. YSR Congress had two days back announced that they had got Kishor on board as ‘consultant’ for the 2019 polls. Though assembly elections in TN are scheduled in 2021, the political situation in the state is fluid as ruling AIADMK is a divided house in the post-Jayalalithaa scenario.AIADMK swept the state during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, winning 37 out of the 38 seats, and defeated DMK in a tight state elections in 2016.I-PAC insiders describe its TN foray as a strategy to study poll-bound states “early”. It got working for Congress in Uttarakhand at virtually the last hour and got about 6-7 months to work in UP — Congress lost badly in both these states despite a late alliance in UP with SP.But I-PAC worked for almost a year in Punjab for Captain Amarinder Singh, helping him seal a massive victory. “All our past projects have been concentrated in north India. Now, we have moved to the south. We are trying to think of a longterm plan… Once we have a project in Tamil Nadu, people hired there by us will definitely work in Tamil Nadu. We are not into campaign mode…we are only looking into organisation’s capacity and having a network across the country,” an I-PAC insider told ET.The advertisements placed by I-PAC in TN for applications say it has “successfully executed campaigns of PM Modi (2014), Nitish Kumar (Bihar, 2015), John Magufuli (Tanzania, 2015) and Captain (Punjab, 2017)”. It adds that I-PAC now wishes to provide a platform for TN professionals from tier-I educational background “to meaningfully associate with electoral politics of their state”.