I-PAC set to remove 85% employees as Kishor eyes Bihar

Kishor is looking to revive his political program that he had initiated in Bihar in 2020, days after being expelled from the JDU.

New Delhi: More than 85% of the almost 900 employees of Indian-Political Action Committee (I-PAC), who were engaged in devising political strategy and campaigning for the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, will be removed from their job.
Sources told this newspaper that as of Thursday, 879 people were working for I-PAC which included 479 core team members and 400 employees who were on contract. On Thursday, these employees were informally told that not more than 150 will continue with the organization with the rest being given termination letters on email in the coming days.
On Thursday, I-PAC chief Prashant Kishor interacted with his team members and told them that they should not expect any kind of job from the West Bengal government and should leave their present profile and explore other opportunities.
Sources present in the meeting said that only those 100-150 people will not be handed the pink slip who are considered crucial to carry on the political strategizing work that I-PAC does. All the members of I-PAC have been given one month’s paid leave post the West Bengal result. And after this time period ends, those who have not been sacked, will move to Punjab to assist the Amarinder Singh-led Congress government for the February 2022 polls.
Many of the employees, who are going to be removed, were until now under the impression that they will be helping the Mamata Banerjee-led government by way of providing “consultancy” after being attached with state government agencies once the TMC comes back to power.
In a related significant development, I-PAC has already started the process of recruiting people for “campaign management” in Bihar. Sources said that Kishor, who has considerable experience of working in Bihar, is looking to revive his political program that he had initiated in Bihar in 2020, days after being expelled from the JDU. The said programme, as per Kishor, involved preparing local youths for political roles.
Kishor, as can be gauged from his recent statements and the decision to revive his activities in Bihar, is looking to emerge as a credible political option in state politics and use his acumen and experience to prepare human and material resources to fight the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections.
The Sunday Guardian reached out to the senior management and the media team of I-PAC for a response on the developments. However, no reply was received till the time the story went to press.