Kamal Haasan meets Prashant Kishor, but AIADMK also in talks with strategist

Days after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami met Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC) founder Prashant Kishor in New Delhi, actor-politician Kamal Haasan on Thursday met the political strategist and his team at his party Makkal Needhi Maiam’s office in Alwarpet in Chennai.

The two regional parties are in the race for the assembly elections in Tamil Nadu slated in 2021.

In 2014, after the BJP came to power with the help of Kishor’s team, several parties across the country had made a beeline for help from the IPAC.

On Kishor’s advice, Nitish Kumar’s JDU aligned with Lalu Prasad’s RJD and won the 2015 Bihar assembly elections. Kishor later joined the JD(U) and was appointed as its vice-president.

In 2017, Congress roped him for UP and Punjab polls, but won only the latter. Down south, in the 2016 assembly elections, DMK deployed IPAC strategists to fix its campaign strategy, while Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy officially signed an agreement with the IPAC to handle the campaign strategy for his party in 2019 Lok Sabha and assembly elections.

After the Lok Sabha poll debacle, AIADMK, which seems desperate to retain power, sought an appointment with two directors of the company, Rishiraj Singh and Vinesh Chandel.

Recently, chief minister Palaniswami, who went to New Delhi for the NITI Ayog meeting, is believed to have met Kishor’s team.

Days after the meeting, Kishor and his team reached Chennai on Thursday and met Kamal Haasan at his party office in Alwarpet. Sources in the MNM said that the IPAC had handled some aspects of election campaign for Kamal Haasan.

Speculations are rife that IPAC would most probably help Kamal’s MNM with their political strategist. Meanwhile, AIADMK are also confident of signing an agreement with IPAC.