Days After Announcing His Party, Prashant Kishor Meets Pappu Yadav

On 11 June 2024, Pappu Yadav, the newly elected member of Parliament (MP) from Bihar's Purnia met Prashant Kishor, acclaimed political strategist and head of Jan Suraaj campaign.

Days before his meeting with Yadav, Kishor had announced that his Jan Suraaj Campaign would take the shape of a new political party on 2 October 2024. The party will contest all 243 seats in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections.

It is understood that Kishor’s party will be the third option for Bihar voters who had to choose between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and parties in alliance with the Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) combination.

The information about the meeting was first shared on Yadav's Facebook page and X (formerly Twitter) handle of Prashant Kishor’s office. While Yadav tried to portray the meeting as a formal one involving discussions on a multitude of issues, the X handle of Prashant Kishor’s office made three separate posts on it.

In one of the posts showing Yadav and Kishor's conversation, the caption was, “Bihar is ready for a change”

It is not the first time that both personalities have met each-other in recent times. The earlier meeting was held on 16 May 2024, right in the middle of elections. Although no information about details of the meeting was put out, just like this time around, it is widely believed that both need each other.

For Pappu Yadav, aligning with a possible strong political unit under Kishor opens up one more avenue for his politics. After his topsy-turvy relationship with RJD, Yadav formed his own Jan Adhikar Party (JAP) and later merged it into Congress in lieu of Purnia ticket. But RJD fielded its own candidate. Despite that Yadav won with more than 23,847 votes.

On the other hand, for Kishor, taking Yadav on board would mean a probable chief minister face for his party.

In the last decade, Yadav has made a name for himself as a people's politician. He has been helping people with his own money. Whether it's Covid lockdowns or flood-prone areas, Yadav ensures that he helps people and is seen as doing so.

The image of Yadav being a politician in touch with ground-level issues goes hand-in-hand with Kishor’s image. Kishor has also marked his presence by travelling through thousands of villages in Bihar in order to build support for his own party.

Incidentally, on the same day which the meeting took place, a first information report (FIR) was filed against Pappu Yadav for allegedly demanding extortion of one crore. This is not something Kishor would sign up to.