Is Prashant Kishor Chanakya for the Congress?

New Delhi: Is the Congress' poll strategist  Prashant Kishor playing the role of Chanakya for the party in upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly election? On Monday, he met Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav after the Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh instructed the CM to meet Prashant. Reportedly, CM had denied meeting Prashant on Sunday but met him on Monday after the order of the father Mulayam. The Congress' poll strategist has already met Netaji and on Monday met his son. The rumours of Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance is getting stronger day by day. However, Akhilesh Yadav has said that any decision on the formation of alliance will be taken by Mulayam Singh. Is Congress more eager to form an alliance? It seems that the Congress is more eager to form alliance than the presently ruling Samajwadi Party (SP). Congress' poll strategist Prashant Kishore who seems to be playing the role of Chanakya is trying hard to join hands with SP. And Congress has all the reasons to do so. Recently, Rita Bahuguna Joshi joined BJP. She also took seventeen Congress leaders in Uttar Pradesh along with her. Caste equation in the Uttar Pradesh: The ruling Samajwadi Party is mainly counting on the votes of Yadavs and Muslims. Congress is also expecting Muslim votes in its favour. Therefore, if both parties join hands that the split of Muslim votes could be avoided. How the alliance will help SP: The recent family fight in the ruling Yadav family has definitely affected its image in the state. Plus, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati is trying hard not only to attract Dalit votes but Muslim votes too. In UP Dalits are the core vote base of the BSP and account for nearly 22% of the population. Muslims account for over 18%. A combination of the two may prove to be formidable for BSP. In 2007, when Mayawati got an absolute majority in the UP, her party’s vote share was 30.4 percent, much less than what she can expect if a Dalit-Muslim alliance works out. Keeping these things in mind, having a friend in state election may work well for SP. Who is Prashant Kishore: Prashant Kishor is an Indian political strategist and advisor to Chief Minister of Bihar on Policies and Program Implementation. He had formerly worked with the United Nations for eight years and came to public attention when Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG), an election-campaign group he conceptualized, assisted the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha election of 2014. In 2015, he along with some members of CAG started the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) and started working for the Bihar assembly election (2015). Working closely with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Kishor helped Kumar's "Grand Alliance" defeat the BJP's alliance 178–58. Nitish is a longtime rival of Modi. On 19 November 2015, the Economic Times revealed that Kishor was in talk with the Congress, to run its campaign for the crucial 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly election. Reportedly, quietly, Kishor has become a de facto advisor to Rahul Gandhi. According to reports, Kishor is likely to be designing the Congress campaign strategy in every state election until 2019.