Political strategist Sunil Kanugolu retained as chief adviser to Karnataka CM DK Shivakumar
Bengaluru: Prominent political strategist Sunil Kanugolu has been officially appointed as the Chief Adviser to Karnataka’s newly sworn-in Chief Minister, D K Shivakumar.
According to an official executive order issued on Monday, June 8, 2026, Kanugolu will retain his Cabinet-rank status within the state administration. The move follows a seamless leadership transition within the ruling Congress party in Karnataka, which saw Shivakumar take over the chief ministerial mantle from outgoing leader Siddaramaiah on June 3.
Interestingly, Kanugolu had previously occupied the exact same advisory post under Siddaramaiah's administration.
The architect behind Congress’s modern campaigns
Kanugolu, who commands the political consultancy firm Inclusive Minds (and is widely associated with Mindshare Analytics), is widely celebrated as the primary architect behind the Congress party's string of recent electoral triumphs.
He officially joined the Congress fold in 2022 as the head of campaign strategy and was inducted into the party's central "Task Force 2024."
His data-driven approach proved monumental during the 2023 state assembly elections.
- Karnataka victory: Kanugolu masterminded highly successful, aggressive anti-corruption blitzes against the incumbent Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government. These included the viral "PayCM" and "40% Sarkara" initiatives. His firm executed extensive hyper-local polling to identify trailing constituencies, allowing the party to make precise course corrections and secure a landslide win.
- Telangana triumph: Alongside his success in Karnataka, Kanugolu is credited with playing a pivotal role in engineering the Congress party’s decisive victory in Telangana during the same election cycle.
A decade of high-stakes kingmaking
Though Kanugolu is currently tied closely to the Congress, his decade-long career spans across various major political forces in India. He originally rose to prominence working alongside famed strategist Prashant Kishor during Narendra Modi’s highly successful 2014 Lok Sabha campaign. Moving to regional politics, he left a permanent mark in Tamil Nadu. In 2015, he designed the "Namakku Naame" (We for Ourselves) mass outreach campaign for M K Stalin, which helped anchor Tamil identity as a central electoral platform for the DMK.
Showing his cross-party appeal, he later collaborated with the rival AIADMK ahead of the 2021 assembly elections to systematically rebuild the public profile of former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami.
Controversies and profile
Kanugolu’s aggressive digital tactics have occasionally drawn him into severe political standoffs. In December 2022, his Hyderabad office was raided by the Telangana Police over allegations that his firm originated derogatory social media posts targeting the then-Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao. While electronic devices were seized and Kanugolu was called in for questioning in January 2023, the Congress staunchly defended him, labelling the raid a textbook case of political vendetta.
Despite orchestrating multi-million-vote campaigns and holding immense sway in state corridors, Kanugolu is famous for maintaining a remarkably low public profile. Hailing from a Telugu-speaking family rooted in Ballari, he spent a major portion of his formative professional life operating in Chennai.