JULY 2019 l PARlIAMENTARIAN 71preparing Modi for the elections can
be gauged from the fact that he told
Pavan Verma who in turn told Karan
Thapar who in turn has quoted in his
biography Devil’s Advocate that
Kishor made Modi see the interview
he did of him thirty times over in
order to prepare him for the 2014
elections. It must be recounted that
Thapar asked some tough questions
regarding the Gujarat Kishor’s team
used the interview to teach Modi how
to handle difficult questions and
uncomfortable situations, Thapar
claimed in his book.
During the build up to the 2014
elections, CAG brought out a detailed
200 page report on each of the 450
seats from which the BJP was planning
to contest. The CAG team had held
ground level opinion polls to gauge the
mood of the voting public and this
data was added to the information
provided by the report. The BJP were
informed on how they could
strengthen their presence in
constituencies where they were weak,
how they could use local caste
equations to their advantage and most
importantly, since the RSS was kept in
the loop of these developments, how
the RSS could be used to educatepeople further about the BJP’s
candidates.
When Congress leader Mani
Shankar Aiyer took a dig at Modi’s
background of selling tea at railway
stations, the CAG team decided to
turn this remark to his advantage.
They came up with a concept called
Chai pe Charcha in which he chatted
with 1,000 tea stalls spread across
India via video conferencing.
In Uttar Pradesh, which Kishor
predicted would be a difficult state, the
CAG came up in the 2014 election with
a rather off beat campaign titled Modi
Aane Wala Hai and this worked
surprisingly very well. This campaign
saw 400 video vans spread across
thousands of villages in the interiors
where his speeches were played over
and over again before the villagers.
Just before voting day, the CAG team
conceived of the Bharat Vijay rallies,
during which Modi spoke at three or
four venues in a single day, and was
projected by 3D holographic image to
100 locations simultaneously.
The unprecedented success of the
Modi campaign saw Kishor’s stock rise
across political parties. He was seen as
the messiah of the political class and
the following year saw him being hired
by chief minister Nitish Kumar to help
him become chief minister for the
third time.
As Kishor moved into Nitish
Kumar’s residence, the chief minister
is reported to have sent his tailor to
stitch a few white kurta pyjamas for
this master strategist. Kishor informed
Kumar that he was not a politician and
therefore did not wear white clothing.nitish prediction
But Kumar was insistent and said he
would need them at some future date
and three years later he was formally
enrolled into the JD(U). But this isThe fall ouT of
using Top-of-The-line
professionals To
provide inpuTs and
oversee every deTail
of elecTioneering
has seen The cosT of
elecTioneering sky
rockeT
functioned as a non-profit group
providing a mix of consultancy and
campaign solutions to Modi. But the
fact is that prior to working for any
political leader, Kishore insists on
some prerequisites being met, the first
of which is that he be given 24x7 access
to the political leader he is working for.
In effect, from 2012, CAG worked
out of Modi’s residence in
Gandhinagar. But Kishor also set up
eight other offices around the country
which were staffed by around 400 paid
members along with another 800 paid
interns and more than one lakh
volunteers.
None of these people worked pro
bono and in retrospect it is anyone’s
guess as to where the money was
coming from.
dress rehearsals
But Kishor’s thoroughness in