JDS may rope in poll strategist Prashant Kishor to craft strategy on party revival
Bengaluru, Jan 30: After facing setbacks in successive polls, the JD(S)leadership is planning to hold talks with poll strategist Prashant Kishor on plans to revive the party for the future, top party sources said on Thursday.
JD(S) leader and former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy is slated to hold talks with Kishor soon on organising the party for the days ahead.
"Kumaraswamy is at it...his strategy has worked out in Bihar and other places, so we can try here also," a top party leader told PTI, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Sources close to Kumaraswamy said the former chief minister has not yet held any discussions with Kishor, but they will meet very soon and the date is yet to be finalised.
"It is to discuss the strategy to build the party.
Kishor is also said to have expressed keenness to meet Kumaranna (Kumaraswamy), they will meet soon," he added.
Not wishing to divulge details, JD(S) state president H K Kumaraswamy merely said there was nothing wrong in taking such help in the interest of the party.
"We can take advice from such people to build and organise the party.
We have already began work towards organising the party from the grassroots level, and it will get a boost after the national level meet of the party on February 10 and 11," he added.
The JD(S) that bagged only 37 seats in the 2018 assembly polls and came to power in alliance with the Congress with H D Kumaraswamy as chief minister managed to win only one seat in the state during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Party patriarch and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda was also defeated in the parliamentary polls.
The party also failed to win even a single seat during the December 2019 bypolls to 15 assembly constituencies in the state.
The Kishor-led Indian Political Action Committee (I- PAC) is currently helping the AAP in the Delhi assembly polls.
The political advocacy group also helped in the electioneering campaign of Narendra Modi in 2014 when he was BJP's prime ministerial candidate.
The I-PAC has worked on a number of successful campaigns since 2014, including the one that brought JD(U) leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to power in 2015.
The organisation also helped Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy win both state and Lok Sabha elections.
Kishor, who was the Janata Dal (United) national vice-president, was on Wednesday expelled from the party following a bitter fallout with its chief Nitish Kumar.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
