The campaign of the Congress for the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections was run from the party’s war room, set up in Bengaluru by KPCC vice-president Sooraj Hegde and KPCC general secretary Mehroz Khan. The war room was chaired by Randeep Singh Surjewala, Congress general secretary in charge of Karnataka.
Primarily, the war room turned into a coordinating point for all Congress candidates across Karnataka. Members of the war room helped candidates in filing nominations, organising the required documentation, addressing nomination issues and also helping them to be fully compliant with EC requirements, including tutoring them on what kind of speeches should be avoided. They also offered training in equipping booth workers for election and counting day work.
“War rooms are now a compulsory factor for political parties to ensure smooth communication, coordination, messaging, and also in ensuring timely action is taken based on information available through political intelligence and surveys,” said Mehroz Khan, a war room veteran and in-charge of the Congress war room in Bengaluru for the 2023 Assembly elections.
Congress had multiple dedicated groups inside the war room for handling different desks. Karnataka was split into key regions — Bengaluru, old Mysuru, central Karnataka , coastal Karnataka, Kittur Karnataka and Kalyan Karnataka — for ease of covering the tasks. Key talent from frontal organisations, like Youth Congress, NSUI and All India Professional Congress, was requisitioned to head various desks and handle different tasks in the war room.
One of them was Bellary native Sunil Kanugolu, newly-inducted general secretary who had worked with acclaimed political strategist Prashant Kishore. He was given the task of building the narrative for the elections, along with voter research and surveys. Sunil deployed a dedicated team in every Assembly segment of Karnataka to work closely with the candidate on voter mapping, opinion polls and establishing the narrative in each segment, and district.
Sasikant Senthil, a former IAS officer, was brought in to manage the war room, especially the booth level work and training.
Chittapur MLA Priyank Kharge headed the social media team and media coordination centre, which covered the messaging for the entire State via its handles. The team delivered messages from the party to voters across Karnataka.
