Poll strategist Sunil Kanugolu, known for staying behind-the-scenes with a vengeance, has true to his style of functioning made an extremely quiet entry into the Congress and found a place at the high table in the party in the most unassuming manner.
The 40-year-old Kanugolu, who has had a decade-long stint as an election strategist, is learnt to have joined the Congress in March this year. And his name now figures in the Task Force set up by party president Sonia Gandhi to look into various aspects of preparing the party for the Lok Sabha polls in 2024. The party had announced at the culmination of its Chintan Shivir in Udaipur that a task force would be formed with an eye on the next general elections.
Kanugolu's name figured as the last on the list of the eight-member Task Force, the others being veterans and senior leaders like P Chidambaram, Mukul Wasnik, Jairam Ramesh, K C Venugopal, Ajay Maken, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Randeep Singh Surjewala.
Kanugolu is expected to be asked to focus on election management, not just for the Lok Sabha polls in 2024 but also the Assembly elections in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Telangana. According to party sources, Kanugolu had already been introduced to the state unit leaders by former party chief Rahul Gandhi and he informed them that the strategist would be working on the party's poll preparation in the southern state.
Kanugolu's entry into the Congress is learnt to have happened right before the party engaged with election strategist-turned-political activist Prashant Kishor in a much publicised round of discussions with regard to his proposals for the party's revamp and his role in it.
Interestingly, Kanugolu has worked with Kishor on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign for the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 as part of the Citizens for Accountable Governance. And unlike Kishor, who is widely covered by the media, he has stuck to being a backroom boy in the true sense of the phrase so much so that little is known about his antecedents and not many know what he looks like.
A Telugu with roots in Bellari and who was born and brought up in Chennai, Kanugolu worked with McKinsey in the US before he returned to India and began work on Modi's campaign in 2014. He was then taken onboard by the DMK for its campaign for the Assembly elections in 2016. He worked with the southern party again the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
In 2016, he launched a strategy group called the Association of Billion Minds that worked to boost the BJP's outreach. He was involved in designing the BJP's strategy for the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. He went on to work for the party in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Karnaraka and Gujarat. In the state polls in early 2021, he was hired by the AIADMK to work on the party's campaign.
Kanugolu's Mindshare Analytics has also worked with the Shiromani Akali Dal, seeking to highlight its achievements during its rule between 2007 and 2017 in the recent Assembly elections.
As he becomes an insider in the grand old party with a stake in the party's revival and preparation for elections, he may find it difficult to remain unknown.
