Sunil Kanungolu has been a part of several election campaigns in the past.
New Delhi:
If narrative battles form the basis of politics, political parties are equally important to electoral victory in selecting candidates, studying voting behavior, and preparing a campaign.
If the Congress, which won the assembly elections in Karnataka with a historic 136 seats on Saturday, made it all work for the party this time, it was because of the key role played by 41-year-old low-profile Sunil Kanungolu. Strategist and Congress member who designed the campaign and did not lose sight of the party till the very end.
Known as “the man of ideas, with a handle on the big picture”, Mr. Kanungolu, a Telugu by origin with roots in Karnataka and now living in Bengaluru, grew up in Chennai and Belongs to a business family. Having worked for the BJP, the DMK and the AIADMK in the past, Mr. Kanungolu joined the Congress last year after long talks with Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, mainly because he wanted to take a challenge and work with a party that Wanted to work with a close friend of his who was close to the values he believed in.
According to those who know him well, Mr. Kanungolu’s greatest strength is his ability to build personal relationships with key party leaders and integrate his team’s campaign into his everyday work.
Sunil Kanungolu with DK Shivakumar.
“He has a personality that is quiet but firm. He is low-profile, attention-hating, and because he always comes armed with data from field surveys, he cannot be bulldozed, and politicians go about their everyday lives.” He finds much value in life in political work,” said a Congress insider.
In Karnataka, Mr. Kanungolu worked hard to forge a strong working relationship with other key leaders running the campaign, mainly the party’s general secretaries, Randeep Surjewala, Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar, apart from KC Venugopal, who helped navigate him. helped. space. This was no exception, as in almost every non-BJP campaign he has worked on, he has shared a personal rapport with the leader, be it DMK supremo MK Stalin or AIADMK chief E Palaniswami in the past. Even in Telangana, where he is working on an aggressive political offensive against the government of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao or KCR, he is known to share a personal bond with leaders like Revanth Reddy.
“This makes it easier for their team to integrate into the system and work with politicians, making the campaign more human-centred. In some other election cases, we have seen party leaders being harassed by strategists and their team members. But with Sunil, it doesn’t happen,” said another party functionary.
Getting the narrative right and in favor of the party is Mr. Kanungolu’s biggest strength, and with a background in market research, his team relies on a lot of field surveys, cutting-edge analytics, and accurate information about what’s happening on the ground receives. ,
In Karnataka, Kanungolu came up with the “PayCM” campaign against the BJP government led by Basavaraj Bommai at a time when his opponents quickly pointed out that “corruption was not a big issue in South India”.
The person who worked on the Congress campaign said, “But what the campaign did was give our party a lot of ammunition to attack the government and connect with the people. It gave us an edge over the BJP, which saw it as a gimmick.” Kept taking like.” Said.
Mr. Kanungolu started his preparations a year in advance, just a month after joining the Congress. He had also distanced himself from working on the Congress campaign in Gujarat due to paucity of time. In Himachal Pradesh, his team worked on field surveys to decide the candidates.
“Sunil has a good handle on the big picture, and he doesn’t lose sight of the details. He delegates and trusts his team when it comes to details. They get to work on everyday snapshots of political campaigning. But narrative setting is a daily chore. For him; he is relentless. He firmly believes that in politics, if you don’t put your story out there, someone else will. So, someone has to put it out,” above said the person.
When it comes to narratives, Mr. Kanungolu has its forte. It was he who brought together aspects such as Tamil pride and the Dravidian model during the Jallikattu protests of 2017, helping the DMK counter an aggressive BJP.
filed survey
The campaign designed by Mr. Kanungolu which started with “PayCM” continued with “Kiwi Mele Huwa” (flower above the ear), suggesting how people were shortchanged. In addition to the most important task of candidate selection, every household had a hard copy of the Guarantee Card, along with the five guarantees that Mr. Kanungolu’s team fine-tuned and made them easy to remember. This is the first time Congress relied on broad area surveys, not just the personal preferences of local leaders. Known for his emphasis on scientific analysis of polling data, Mr. Kanungolu, according to those who work with him, emphasizes extensive field surveys, statistics, analysis, and avoids relying solely on call-center-driven Emphasis is placed on catching trends using modern techniques instead. data gathering.
Another person who worked on the party’s campaign pointed out that even though the Congress was a little apprehensive about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rallies, making it difficult for the Congress in Karnataka, Mr. Kanungolu insisted on focusing on the highlights .
“If you just say ‘hawa badal raha raha hai’ then he does not accept it. He will work towards knowing whether the impact is good enough to change the voting pattern and then work in that direction,” he said. do.”
Mr Kanungolu is expected to play a key role in the upcoming elections and also in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but his immediate task will be to handle the party’s campaign in the states of Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
background
Mr. Kanungolu has been a part of several election campaigns in the past, especially of the BJP. Incidentally, the election campaign in Karnataka in 2018 saw him working on behalf of the BJP, and the party managed to emerge as the single largest party with 104 seats. Mr. Kanungolu has worked with McKinsey, a global management consulting firm, before starting work with political parties. He headed the Association of Billion Minds (ABM), which advised the BJP on various election-related assignments, before leaving it four years ago. Known to be deeply influenced by Periyar, the caste movement in the country, everyday caste discrimination, and the use of social organizations to combat them, are some of his major interests, apart from Tamil cinema.
Besides being part of Narendra Modi’s campaign in 2014, Mr. Kanungolu was part of several BJP campaigns, notably in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat in 2017. He was also associated with MK Stalin and oversaw its ‘Namakku Naam’ (We are for ourselves) campaign. During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the party won 38 out of a total of 39 seats. Later, Mr. Kanungolu also teamed up with the AIADMK against the DMK and led the party to win 75 seats in the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.