Congress’s election strategist Sunil Kanugolu has been appointed as the Chief Advisor to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Sunil, who ran the poll campaign for the Congress and is credited with giving Congress the edge, will get a Cabinet Minister’s rank. Sunil joined the Congress in 2022 as the head of the campaign strategy and is also a member of the Task Force 2024. He was closely involved in campaign strategy, messaging and conducting surveys for Karnataka Assembly elections. Sunil has worked with several political parties and leaders in the past, however he had surprisingly joined the Congress in 2022.
In Karnataka, Sunil and his team at Mindshare Analytics have been credited with designing the ‘PayCM’ and ‘40% sarakara’ campaigns against CM Bommai and his government, particularly focussing on corruption allegations. His team also reportedly conducted over five surveys in the months leading up to the elections, crucially identifying key seats where the Congress is falling short by a small margin and suggesting course correcting measures.
Before working with Karnataka Congress, Sunil has worked on election campaigns in half a dozen states including Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. Sunil, who is never seen in the foreground, has been maintaining a low-profile since he started his work as a political strategist, along with Prashant Kishor, for PM Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha election campaign in 2014. Since then, he has worked with several political parties including the DMK, AIADMK and the Congress. He is credited for designing Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin’s Namakku Naame (We for ourselves) campaign in 2015 and bringing the Tamil pride issue as a key election plank for the DMK. He later worked with the AIADMK in 2020 and worked on specifically rebuilding then CM Edappadi Palanisamy’s public image.
In December 2022, Telangana police raided the office of Mindshare Analytics alleging derogatory social media posts were posted against Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao and his party Bharat Rashtra Samithi at their behest. Hyderabad Cyber Crime wing which conducted the raids said that they had received several complaints regarding the posts and went on to seize mobile phones, computer hard discs and other electronic equipment. Sunil was called for questioning by the police in January 2023. The Congress had strongly criticised the raids and had called it vendetta politics by KCR.
Sunil comes from a Telugu-speaking family and hails from Karnataka’s Ballari district. He lived and worked in Chennai for several years.