Prashant Kishor's tweet today is his sharpest attack yet on Rahul Gandhi. (File)
The Congress is vital for a strong opposition but no individual has the "divine right" to its leadership, poll strategist Prashant Kishor said today in yet another sharp attack on Rahul Gandhi, with whom he was in talks for a collaboration just months ago. His latest strike comes on top of Mamata Banerjee's swipes at the Congress leader in Mumbai last evening.
"The IDEA and SPACE that #Congress represents is vital for a strong opposition. But Congress' leadership is not the DIVINE RIGHT of an individual especially, when the party has lost more than 90% elections in last 10 years. Let opposition leadership be decided Democratically," Prashant Kishor tweeted this afternoon.
Prashant Kishor has been pummelling the Gandhis with truth bombs ever since the collapse of his talks with them. To add to the acrimony, he and Mamata Banerjee have been on a shopping spree for Congress leaders from Goa, where polls are due next year.
The Congress made it clear that the statement is unacceptable from "a professional without ideological commitment".
"The individual being discussed here is pursuing his Divine Duty to struggle and save Indian democracy from the RSS. A professional without ideological commitment is free to advice parties/individuals on how to contest elections but he cannot set the agenda of our politics," tweeted the party's spokesperson Pawan Khera.
"This bogey of Congress assuming a 'Divine Right To Rule' needs to be busted. Rahul Gandhi is carrying forward our rich legacy of a 'Divine Duty To Struggle'," he added.
Rahul Gandhi quit as Congress president in 2019 after the party's second straight election defeat. As various parties prep for the 2024 election, questions about his leadership once again confront the party.
Yesterday, Mamata Banerjee said in an interaction in Mumbai: "If one does nothing and is abroad half the time, then how will one do politics? For politics there should be continuous endeavour."
Weeks after Mamata Banerjee's victory in the April-May Bengal election, Mr Kishor met with the Gandhis amid reports that he had a grand plan for the Congress's revival. But soon there were reports of a breakdown in those negotiations.
Sources say Prashant Kishor believes the Congress may well expect to play big brother in any opposition strategy for 2024 but not under its current leadership.
In October, Mr Kishor had said in Goa that the BJP is "not going anywhere for many decades" and the problem with Rahul Gandhi is that he does not realise it.
"BJP is going to be the centre of Indian polity... whether they win, whether they lose, like it was for the first 40 years for Congress. BJP is going nowhere.... That is where the problem lies with Rahul Gandhi probably. He thinks it's just a matter of time that people will throw him (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) away. That's not happening," he had said.
The ace strategist earlier also pointed at "deep-rooted problems and structural weaknesses" in the Congress and sought to "caution" anyone who believed that Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's move to meet the families of the farmers killed in Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh - and their widely-reported confrontation with the police - meant a "quick, spontaneous revival" of a Congress-led opposition.