PATNA: Poll strategist Prashant Kishor is set to provide his electoral expertise to CM Nitish Kumar for the second consecutive assembly election.According to sources, five-six meetings have already been held between Nitish and Kishor in recent weeks in this regard.“I had a word with Kishor last night... It is almost certain he will be working for the JD (U) in the forthcoming election in Bihar ,” JD (U) secretary general K C Tyagi told TOI on Monday and added he would chalk out the party’s election strategies and also help resolve issues in its alliance with other parties.The sources said Kishor was also in talks with the BJP to help it in the 2019 general election. He reportedly held a few meetings with party president Amit Shah as well recently. Asked about it, Tyagi said he had also heard about it. “But I am not the right person to comment Kishor-BJP talks,” he said.A public health specialist and a former UN mission chief in Africa, Kishor quit job in 2011 to work with Narendra Modi who was then the Gujarat CM. The 40-year-old formed the Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG) modelled on the US’s political action committees that act as force multipliers to political campaigns.Kishor is also learned to have mulled setting up a parallel policy advisory unit attached to the PMO. The idea was to convert his CAG, which crafted the Modi campaign, into a policy outfit — Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC) — to counsel the PM on development. It did not materialise, and Kishor broke up with Modi.The next few months saw Kishor recast the IPAC as an electioneering agency and oversaw the campaign and alliance strategies that helped the Grand Alliance (GA) of Nitish, RJD and Congress trounce the BJP in the 2015 assembly election in Bihar.Kishor got his reward as Nitish appointed him his adviser, a role that lost sheen with the collapse of GA government in July last year.

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