The Karnataka Congress scored a stunning victory in the assembly elections held on May 10, winning a total of 135 seats in the 224-member assembly. The big party had roped in election strategist Sunil Kanugolu, who has been working with the Congress party in the state since last year.
Election strategist Sunil Kanugolu. (File photo)
Looking ahead, Kanugolu is now all set to lead the party’s election management efforts in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Kanugolu’s move to join the Congress was first reported by HT earlier April.
Who is Suni Kanugolu?
Sunil Kanugolu was born in Ballari district of Karnataka from where he completed his high school education. Later, he lived in Chennai before moving to Bangalore, reports The Quint.
According to local media reports, despite being originally a Telugu speaker, Kanugolu has roots in Karnataka and now resides in Bangalore.
He has worked for the BJP, DMK and AIADMK in the past. He also got behind aspects of Tamil pride and the Dravidian model during the 2017 Jallikattu protests, helping the DMK counter the aggressive BJP, local media reported.
Sunil Kanugolu with Congress
After Prashant Kishor declined the Congress’s offer to join the party on April 26 last year, Sunil Kanugolu came on board to help with the party’s election strategy for various elections across India.
Last year in May, Kanugolu was appointed as a member of Task Force 2024, a team set up by the Congress to implement the Nav Sankalp (New Resolution) declaration adopted in Udaipur. Apart from Kanugolu, the team consists of prominent leaders like P Chidambaram, Mukul Wasnik, Jairam Ramesh, KC Venugopal, Ajay Maken, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Randeep Singh Surjewala.
The poll strategist has also been credited with planning Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, a march that covered a length of over 4,000 km from the southern tip of India to Jammu and Kashmir. The yatra is believed to have been an instrumental move by the grand old party that led to some recent turning points in election results.
After his successful work for the Karnataka assembly elections, Kanugolu has set up an office in Madhya Pradesh where he is expected to work for the state elections, according to news agency PTI report .
Your past assignments
Sunil Kanugolu was earlier part of Prashant Kishor’s team who played a crucial role in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election campaign in 2014. He was also instrumental in BJP’s election campaigns in several states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, and Karnataka, which the BJP won.
Kanugolu is an in-demand pollster and had founded the Association of Brilliant Minds (ABM), which was the BJP’s campaign body for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections. He is known to have worked for the BJP in UP and is believed to have played a key role in the BJP’s landslide victory in 2017, according to party leaders.
