Congress leader Rahul Gandhi must think about stepping aside if the party does not get the results it wants in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, political strategist Prashant Kishor said, according to PTI.

Kishor said the Wayanad MP has been running the Congress for all practical purposes and has been unable to either step aside or let somebody else steer it despite his inability to deliver in the last 10 years.

“This according to me is also anti-democratic,” he added.

The political strategist said Gandhi should allow someone else to take charge for five years. “When you are doing the same work for the last 10 years without any success, then there is no harm in taking a break,” he said in an interaction with PTI editors.

“Your mother [Congress leader Sonia Gandhi] did it,” Kishor said, referring to her decision to stay away from politics after her husband and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991. Sonia Gandhi joined the Congress in 1997 and became the party president in 1998.

Rahul Gandhi led the Congress’ campaigns for the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, both of which the party lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance by wide margins. He resigned as the Congress president after the party’s defeat in 2019.

Kishor remarked on Sunday that although Gandhi then wrote that he would step back to allow somebody else to do the job, he has been doing the opposite.

Commenting on his decision to decline an offer to join the Congress as a member of its Empowered Action Group 2024, Kishor asked how the group, which was not a constitutional body of the party, could have reformed the Congress Working Committee.

In April 2022, the Congress had formed the Empowered Action Group 2024 after Kishor had given a presentation to the top leaders of the party and held a discussion with Sonia Gandhi. The political strategist, however, refused to join the Congress and said the party needed leadership and collective will to fix its “deep-rooted structural problems” through transformational reforms.

Kishor on Sunday also ruled out the Aam Aadmi Party taking the Congress’ place as the main Opposition party. “There is no such possibility,” he said. “Its weakness that I see is that it has no ideological or institutional rooting.”

The political strategist shot to fame after running a successful campaign for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He has had stints with many political parties since then.

His political consultancy firm, I-PAC, was believed to be instrumental in the state election victories of the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar, the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.