Team News Riveting
Kolkata, April 10, 2021
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) had gone in a defensive mode after a reported conversation between party’s poll strategist Prashant Kishor and some journalists in Delhi went “leaked” in the social media.
In the chat, Kishor had been heard talking about various factors in favour of the BJP in context of the ongoing Bengal Assembly elections including admitting the popularity of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The leaked Clubhouse chat with Prashant Kishor reportedly features Ravish Kumar, Swati Chaturvedi, Arfa Khanum, Mitali Mukherjee, Rohini Singh, Sanjay Hegde and several other journalists on Clubhouse. On the Clubhouse tape, the poll-strategist is heard admitting that parties, including the TMC, used the Muslim community to gain votes. Prashant Kishor goes on to acknowledge the tremendous support and popularity that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has.
On being asked by the Clubhouse Journalists about which way the Matua Community is voting, the poll-strategist revealed that he feels the BJP enjoyed the support of 75 per cent of the Matua community. In fact, Prashant Kishor goes on to say, “there are a lot of BJP workers on ground. All those workers could have been imported from the left, but are dedicatedly working for BJP. There is no area or district in West Bengal, where there is no huge support for BJP. ”
Responding to a questioned posed to the poll-strategist by Ravish Kumar regarding the lack of anti-incumbency faced by the Modi government, Prashant Kishor says, “The anti-incumbency is against the state govt and not the central govt and Modi is popular here, very popular. If we are doing a leader survey then Modi and Mamata are equally popular. Which is a very big thing, Modi is very popular.”
After the chat went viral, the TMC went into a defensive mode. Its leaders took a press conference and reiterated the line that the party’s poll strategists had maintained.
Kishor took to Twitter to say that the BJP should share the full chat instead of “selective” parts of it. He also reiterated what he had tweeted earlier – that BJP won’t get 100 seats in the 2021 Assembly elections in West Bengal. This makes it clear that Kishor is confirming the authenticity of the audio released by the BJP.
But from the TMC or Kishor’s end, the full conversation was not released that they could have done to substantiate the claim.
