The Karnataka Congress has roped in ace poll strategist Sunil Kanugolu to mount a powerful campaign against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the state ahead of assembly polls early next year.
After an extremely confidential meeting with the Congress high command, the party hopes that Sunil’s expertise will help it stitch together a winning formula and ensure the BJP is not voted back to power in 2023.
Having recently completed an assignment with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) to formulate a strategy for the February 20 Punjab elections, the former consultant with McKinsey has now entered his home turf, Karnataka, to help the Congress.
News18 reached out to Sunil Kanugolu for his reaction but had received no response at the time of publishing this article.
Sunil returned to India in 2014 to be part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election campaign. At the time he partnered with political strategist and tactician Prashant Kishor to successfully bring the BJP to power.
Confirming Sunil’s appointment, a senior Karnataka Congress leader who did not want to be named said his expertise will not only help the party come up with a winning poll campaign but also infuse new vigour.
“He brings a rich experience of handling political campaign strategy across the country and parties. The Karnataka Congress has been working hard towards showing people how the BJP has failed in its administration as well as development in the state. Sunil’s team will help us put out a much more effective campaign and bring in the much-needed change,” he told News18.
By bringing in Sunil, the Congress is looking to create a favourable narrative after the HD Kumaraswamy-led JDS-Congress coalition government collapsed in July 2019 due to resignations by several members of both parties. The BJP subsequently came to power.
After successfully fronting general elections for Modi in 2014, Sunil has been part of the key strategy teams for several regional and national parties.
He led the political campaign for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in 2016 where he played a pivotal role in building MK Stalin’s image as the successor to party supremo K Karunanidhi. Stalin’s Namakku Naame (By us, for us) campaign was Sunil’s brainchild and that also helped the party project him as its chief ministerial candidate. However, the DMK lost that election to the AIADMK by a wafer-thin margin of one per cent.
As the head of the Association of Billion Minds (ABM), the BJP’s strategy war room in 2016, Sunil effectively managed to lead the party to success in several states like Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, and also Uttar Pradesh that brought Yogi Adityanath to power in 2017.
In 2019, Sunil was back with the DMK, which was battling against the Modi wave. The DMK wanted to build an anti-Modi and anti-BJP narrative in the state. Once again Sunil was successful in turning the tables in favour of the DMK, which won 39 out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats.
As soon as the strategist resigned from the DMK in 2020, he received a call from then AIADMK chief minister EK Palaniswami to join him and since then he was part of the core advisory team on all policy matters.
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