Prashant Kishor, the unseen force behind Nitish Kumar’s victory in Bihar is the man who once crafted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national high-tech and highly successful election campaign. The 37-year-old master poll strategist has emerged as the man with the Midas touch.

Prashant worked as a public health Professional for 10 years including one and half  year in Bihar. Mr Kishor quit a UN health expert’s job in Africa in 2011 to return to India and explore his skills as an election strategist and planner.  He formed a team of young MBA, Legal and IT professionals known as the Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG). He was the lead choreographer and conceiver of the CAG and now he runs Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC).

In 2012, his team contributed to Modi’s Gujrat assembly campaign. This team also went on to craft BJP’s election campaign during the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 that scored Narendra Modi the Prime Minister’s seat. Prashant Kishor is better known for the Hi-tech projection of Modi in 3-D and “Chai -pe- Charcha”. Now, he joined hands with Nitish Kumar this year for the Bihar Elections, helping the Grand Alliance sweep the Assembly Elections with a clear majority.

Since early in the March of this year, a team of about 300 graduates from the premier institutes (IIT, IIM, NLUs etc) of India worked together for the victory of Nitish Kumar led Mahagatbhandan. Prashant Kishor came out to support Nitish earlier in May this year, calling him one of the most credible politicians who had improved Bihar on many fronts.

Kishor replaced the ‘Chai pe Charcha’ he coined for Modi with ‘Parcha (pamphlet) pe charcha’ for Nitish, which asked people for feedback on the state government’s performance in the last 10 years  and the comic series ‘Bal-Narendra’ was replaced with ‘Munna se Nitish’. His team also got a catchy campaign song, “Bihar mein bahar ho, Nitishe Kumar ho” composed by Bollywood composer Sneha Khanwalkar.  A “Har Ghar Dastak” (knock on every door) campaign took the outreach further. Campaigns using cycles that are one of the main indicators of Nitish’s work were the other ideas crafted by Kishore in this election. He chose to focus on Nitish’s image as the development man to win votes for him.

Mr Kishor’s tested strategy is perception-building or creating a buzz around a party. Not only in India, even in Tanzania, where elections just got over, IPAC provided consultancy services to the Chama-Cha Manpinduzi (CCM) party. Prashant is  brilliant political strategy consultant which has made him a Brand in himself.

Before putting together election campaigns for Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar, Kishor was also engaged in work with the Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Trust and the hospital it runs in Amethi. Now, after two back to back successes, it will be interesting to see who approaches Prashant Kishor for the upcoming elections in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh and who he chooses to work with.