Congress strategist Sunil Kanugolu tasked with 2024 LS campaign, social media outreach

New Delhi, Dec 21: Ahead of crucial Lok Sabha elections, Congress strategist Sunil Kanugolu has been given the charge of handling the party's campaign strategy and to look after its social media campaigns also, party sources said on Thursday.

According to sources, Kanugolu, who played a crucial role in the party's victory in Karnataka and Telangana, has been asked to look after party's campaign strategy on the social media.

The source also said that Kanugolu will be setting up a war room to look after the party's campaign strategy for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Besides the Lok Sabha task, he has also been assigned the job of party's campaign strategy for Haryana.

Recently Kanugolu had attended a meeting at Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge's residence where General Secretary K.C. Venugopal and members from the party's communication team were also present.

He also visited the Congress war room twice and a meeting was held with Venugopal, communication in-charge Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera, and Supriya Shrinate.

Before coming to the Congress camp, Kanugolu had also held multiple round of meetings with Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) party to look at its campaigning. However, Kanugolu surprised everyone by joining the Congress and was soon made the chairman of the Election Strategy Committee.

Kanugolu was brought into Congress fold in May last year and since then he has worked as a strategist for the party and was responsible for preparing surveys, campaigning, deciding candidates, and winning strategy in Telangana, and his work played a crucial role.

Kanugolu, who had earlier worked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of the BJP's campaign, had also worked with election strategist Prashant Kishor in 2014 before parting ways. He had worked for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and is said to have played a key role in the resounding victory of Yogi Adityanath in 2017. Kanugolu was also responsible for supporting Bharat Jodo Yatra-led by Rahul Gandhi, which he kick-started from Tamil Nadu's Kanyakumari on September 7 last year.