TDP's Chandrababu Naidu at a public meeting. The party has ended its association with poll strategist Sunil Kanugolu. (Naidu/Facebook)
Workers and leaders of the main Opposition TDP in Andhra Pradesh are a relieved lot. They no longer have to deal with the confusion prevailing in the rank and file over the two poll consultancy firms advising the party .
A poll strategy firm founded by Karnataka-based poll strategist Sunil Kanugolu, Mindshare Analytics, has ceased its work with TDP.
In an amicable snapping of the arrangement that was put in place around February-March, sources in the TDP told South First that Kanugolu’s firm will no longer work with the party.
The reason for the confusion among the TDP leaders was that the party had already signed up another poll strategy firm, Showtime Consulting of Robbin Sharma, more than two years ago.
Teams of Robbin Sharma, a former associate of ace poll strategist Prashant Kishor, were already working for the TDP in the field for more than two years. Kishor is himself in the process of winding up operations in neighbouring Telangana where he was consulting with the TRS.
After TDP signed up Mindshare Analytics to manage its election and campaign strategy and their teams also started hitting the ground, party leaders witnessed confusion.
They were in a dilemma whether to heed the team of Showtime Consulting or Mindshare Analytics, a TDP leader said.
“It isn’t about which of the two strategy firms is competent or good. There was a lot of confusion on who to work with. For instance, one team came to us to take feedback or information and again another team came to us with the same set of queries,” a grassroots leader of TDP from Vijayawada told South First
“We hear that it will now be only teams of one firm that will interact with us,” he added.
After TDP signed up Kanugolu’s firm, Mindshare Analytics aggressively undertook hiring for its Andhra Pradesh operations.
It is learnt that at least 150 to 200 field-level staff and other important backend positions were filled at its office in Hyderabad. Members working out of Bengaluru were also engaged with TDP operations. Mindshare Analytics was about to set up a backend office in Vijayawada as well, but the has now been shelved.
Now, those hired for the Andhra Pradesh operations will work on Kanugolu’s assignments for the Congress party in other states like Telangana and Karnataka.
“I was recruited for Andhra operations to work for the TDP. Our team prepared a detailed SWOT analysis of all the 175 Assembly segments in the last few months. And the core team members began meetings with us to discuss the reports we prepared,” a Mindshare Analytics team member told South First.
“We had completed around two-three rounds of discussions on a few Assembly segments. Then, as we were getting ready for another round of discussion, we were told the contract with TDP had ended. Now I have been asked to join the team working for Telangana Congress,” the team member added.
During the recruitment, Mindshare Analytics had also poached a few members of Robbin Sharma’s team.
Kanugolu was an interesting addition to an important national-level panel constituted by its interim chief Sonia Gandhi in May and tasked with bringing back the grand old party to power in 2024.
Kanugolu, who likes to maintain a low profile, was listed among veteran Congress leaders like P Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, KC Venugopal and others in the eight-member “Taskforce-2024”.
Following the Udaipur Nav Sankalp Shivir, the Congress announced the constitution of three panels — the Political Affairs Group, Taskforce-2024 and the Central Planning Group — to revive the fortunes of the national party.
Among the three, Taskforce 2024 was seen as an important panel tasked with bringing back the “lost glory of the Congress” in the next general elections.
Each member was to be assigned specific tasks related to organisation, communications and media, outreach, finance, and election management.
Kishor, Robbin and Kanugolu worked on Narendra Modi’s prime ministerial campaign for the 2014 elections and also his chief ministerial campaign before that in Gujarat.
Kishor and Kanugolu were members of the founding team of Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG) that had worked for Modi in both the state and national elections.
After Kishor left the CAG after the 2014 polls and started his own political consulting firm IPAC, Kanugolu, along with other like-minded folks, launched the Association of Brilliant Minds (ABM).
BJP’s big win in Uttar Pradesh in 2017 can be credited to the strategy of ABM’s team led by Kanugolu.
In the Tamil Nadu Assembly polls, Kanugolu worked on the campaign of the ruling AIADMK which lost to DMK. He had also worked with MK Stalin’s DMK around the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Besides many other campaigns, Kanugolu’s team managed the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) campaign in Punjab in the 2022 Assembly polls.
The SAD, which had been on a downward spiral since 2017, registered the worst defeat in its history, winning just three of the state’s 117 Assembly seats.
Robbin Sharma’s Showtime Consulting was hired by TDP Chief N Chandrababu Naidu to help revive his party after its drubbing in the 2019 elections.
Interestingly, a team of Robbin’s also worked on the Aam Admi Party (AAP) campaign in Punjab. The party swept the state with a record number of Assembly seats.
AAP’s flagship campaign slogan, “Ik Mauka Kejriwal Nu, Ik Mauka Bhagwant Mann Nu”, is learnt to have been coined by Robbin himself.
Robbin headed the CAG-driven 2014 Modi campaign ‘Chai pe Charcha’. He was also involved with Nitish Kumar’s 2015 cycle campaign ‘Har Ghar Nitishe, Har Man Nitishe’ in Bihar by IPAC, and its ‘Khat Sabha’ campaign for Rahul Gandhi in Uttar Pradesh in 2017.
He also worked briefly as campaign manager to Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
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