Patna: Election strategist Prashant Kishore is embroiled in a legal battle with Sashwat Gautam, another poll strategist who claims to have helped him in the 2015 Bihar assembly elections campaign.
Gautam alleges that the content for Kishor’s “Baat Bihar Ki” campaign, which was announced last month, was plagiarised from his “Bihar Ki Baat” initiative.
Gautam, an engineer and post–graduate in analysis and public finance from George Washington University in the US, works for the Congress. He hails from Motihari in Bihar. He has lodged a case against Kishor and one Osama Khursheed under sections 420 (cheating) and 406 (criminal breach of trust) of the IPC.
When Kishor’s lawyer moved for anticipatory bail Tuesday, the district judge at Patna refused to grant a stay order on arrest and transferred the case to a sessions court in the city for hearing on 7 March.
The case has also stirred political circles as the state’s Public Prosecutor Vijay Kumar Sinha landed up in the district court. Sinha said in court that the charges were serious in nature and that the accused (Kishor) had made financial and political gains through theft of content and was capable of tampering with the evidence. “The case was not lodged by the government and yet the PP intervened,” said a close associate of Kishor.
Kishor, the former JD(U) vice-president, had fallen out with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over differences on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) after Kumar backed it. He was later expelled from the party in January.
Kishor then launched the “Baat Bihar Ki” campaign to highlight “misgovernance under Kumar”.
Also read: Couldn’t have said it better — Prashant Kishor earns Congress, RJD praise for Nitish attack
The case
Gautam lodged an FIR against Kishor last month for alleged cheating.
Gautam, who had earlier worked with the Maryland Water Commission in the US and for some time in Rwanda, said he and Kishor had worked on Nitish Kumar’s poll campaign against the BJP during the 2015 assembly elections.
“My job is to use data to build a political narrative. I am working for the Congress party ahead of the 2020 assembly polls,” Gautam, 34, told The Print on Wednesday. “Instead of using a photo of Rahul Gandhi, we use statistics like there are only 3,500 government doctors for a population of 12 crores.”
Gautam has alleged that Kishor plagiarised content from his ‘Bihar Ki Baat’ campaign. He said biharkibaat.in was registered with GoDaddy, a service provider, and also with Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), in January while Kishor’s Baat Bihar Ki was registered on 16 February.
Gautam further alleged that Kishor got the content from Osama Khursheed who, he added, was a member of the JD(U)’s Chhatra unit and had worked on the Bihar Ki Baat campaign.
“Osama suddenly disappeared with the laptop that had the details of the ad (Bihar Ki Baat) and refused to take my calls. I got my laptop back through a person,” Gautam told ThePrint. “But Osama surfaced with Prashant Kishor, who then released his campaign with content that was to be used in my campaign.”
Kishor, on his part, said Gautam was just an acquaintance.
“I don’t know Sashwat Gautam well. He surfaced in 2015, saying he could help me. I introduced him to the relevant people of my company IPAC. I have not met him in the last five years,” Kishor told ThePrint.
“This case is a minor issue. Even if there is political motivation, the truth has its own strength. I have full faith in the judiciary.”
He also denied the allegations that Khursheed worked for him. “I know him as a member of the JD(U) youth wing,” Kishor said.
Gautam, however, claimed that he had at least 50 e-mail correspondences with Kishor to prove that he was not merely an acquaintance.
“PK (Kishor) is street smart. But he is not academically sound. He gives data on finance but will not be able to analyse what went wrong in Bihar,” Gautam said. “He does not have academic robustness. He is like a person who owns 100 factories but does not know how to run them. He appoints the right people to do so.”
Gautam also denied suggestions that his case had political backing.
A close aide of Kishor, though, described Gautam as a highly ambitious man who cannot remain stable in one job.
“There is an element of restlessness in him. The fact that a PK has emerged as the top political strategist despite academic shortfalls makes him a target of others trying to gain a foothold in the growing business of political strategy in India,” the Kishor aide said.
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