Sasikanth Senthil: Ex-IAS officer, war room strategist, now Cong's LS candidate from TN

CHENNAI: Former IAS officer Sasikanth Senthil, who designed the poll campaigns of the Congress party in Karnataka and Rajasthan not so long ago, will be doing what he does best in his native Tamil Nadu for the next one month - poll strategizing.

Only this time he will be strategizing and campaigning for himself in semi-urban Tiruvallur Parliamentary constituency for the April 19 Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu. Sasikanth was on Saturday announced the party candidate for Tiruvallur (reserve).

A 2009 batch Karnataka cadre IAS officer, Senthil quit All India Service in 2019 during his stint as deputy commissioner in communally sensitive Dakshin Karnataka. A staunch critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP regime and Hindutva agenda, Senthil shot to fame during the last Assembly polls in Karnataka when he successfully designed the poll strategy for Congress’ Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar.

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Impressed with the former bureaucrat's strategy, which ensured the Congress its best ever performance in Karnataka since the late 1980s and which outmanoeuvred the BJP in the southern state, the Congress appointed him chairman of the party’s central election war room in Rajasthan late last year.

The AICC top leadership realised his potential when he scripted the “40% commission sarkar '' & “PayCM'' campaigns against the then chief minister Basavaraj Bommai of BJP in Karnataka.

A fierce critic of the Hindutva narrative of the BJP, he travelled throughout the country to meet the anti-CAA protestors in various parts of the country. He formally joined the Congress party in 2020. His influence in the AICC was so high that his name was briefly doing the rounds for TNCC presidentship till the party appointed K Selvaperunthagai recently.