Tamil Nadu CM Palaniswami to meet Prashant Kishor's I-PAC with an eye on 2021 state polls

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami is set to meet top executives of Prashant Kishor's I-PAC on a possible consultancy for the 2021 state Assembly elections.

Palaniswami, who is also the co-coordinator of the ruling AIADMK, left for Delhi on Friday evening, with a top executive in I-PAC confirming that the meeting was scheduled for Saturday. The source however added that it was no indication that the poll consultancy firm will work for the AIADMK in the 2021 polls.

Kishor rose to fame for being one of key strategists behind Narendra Modi's successful 2014 general election campaign and the team he founded - Indian Political Action Committee - went on to work for Nitish Kumar in the 2015 Bihar elections and for Amarinder Singh in the 2017 Punjab elections. More recently, he helped Jagan Mohan Reddy to a resounding win in the Andhra Pradesh state polls.

Kishor moved on to become a mentor for the organisation he founded after he formally joined the Janata Dal(U) last year. Sources said Palaniswami would be talking to I-PAC co-founder Rishi Raj Singh and other senior members of the team.

The AIADMK, which went on a steep downslide after the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa, would be desperate for a strategy to stay afloat in 2021. It's managed to cling on to power by scraping through the recent 22-seat Assembly bypolls, but was demolished by the DMK-Congress alliance in the Parliament elections.

Jagan's landmark victory over Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam in the 2019 Assemly elections has raised I-PAC's stock in the south, with some reports suggesting that Naidu himself is thinking of doing business with the poll consultancy firm.