DMK ropes in Prashant Kishor for 2021 Tamil Nadu assembly polls

It is official now. The DMK has signed up poll strategist Prashant Kishor to draw a successful strategy for the 2021 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

Though the agreement was in the works for more than two months, DMK President M K Stalin took to Twitter on Sunday to make the much-awaited announcement.

“Happy to share that many bright & like-minded young professionals of Tamil Nadu are joining us under the banner of @IndianPAC to work with us on our 2021 election and help shape our plans to restore TN to its former glory!” Stalin wrote on Twitter.

DMK, a powerful cadre-based party, had earlier worked with election strategist for the 2016 assembly polls. The 2021 election ground is likely to be crowded with new players like actors Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth besides the existing ones.

DH had on November 30 reported that Kishor will work for the DMK in the 2021 elections. Kishor has successfully handled the poll campaigns of Narendra Modi in 2014, Nitish Kumar (2015), Amarinder Singh (2017) and Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy (2019).

With Kishor being roped in by DMK, he will now be working with two major anti-BJP parties – the Trinamool Congress and the DMK – which will face assembly elections in their respective states of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu in the same year.

Winning the 2021 assembly polls is a political necessity for the DMK, which has remained out of power in Tamil Nadu since May 2011. The party had lost three successive elections – 2011, 2014 and 2016 – before it tasted success in 2019.

Though the DMK-led alliance swept the April Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu, it could not replicate the success formula in by-elections to two assembly constituencies held in October.

The AIADMK, which was perceived as weak after the death of its charismatic leader J Jayalalithaa in 2016, won the seats with a wide margin heralding the arrival of Edappadi K Palaniswami as a leader in his own right.

Also, the DMK will have to face new players like Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth, the latter making controversial statements and projecting himself as an alternative to Dravidian parties, besides tackling the challenge from a resurgent AIADMK led by Palaniswami and the BJP, though it is a marginal player in the state.