Can Sunil Kanugolu bring India’s Modi down, 10 years after helping him win?

One of India’s foremost election war room generals, Sunil Kanugolu operates from the shadows. But Modi isn’t his only challenge: His own party, Congress, isn’t helping his campaign, either.

A small crack in one of the pillars supporting the world’s largest lift-irrigation project was the opening that Sunil Kanugolu was looking for as he shepherded the election campaign of the opposition Congress party in the southern Indian state of Telangana late last year.

Up against the regional Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) party whose leader K Chandrashekhar Rao had ruled Telangana since the state’s birth a decade earlier, the Congress, riding on disenchantment over alleged corruption and nepotism, was polling well.

But Kanugolu, the in-house election mastermind of the Indian National Congress or Congress party, wanted something more — something that would drive home his party’s advantage, based on a mantra that’s central to his approach.

“No election is ever won by logic. Emotions win elections,” the 40-year-old says often, according to a close confidant who requested anonymity.

In Telangana, a member of Kanugolu’s team found a photograph of the small crack in the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project that morphed into a poll strategy to topple the BRS from power.

Mock ATM machines, branded as “Kaleshwaram ATM”, were set up in different parts of Telangana and photos of Congress workers inserting fake currency notes into the slot — which was the chief minister’s mouth — went viral. In the story that the Congress was telling, the project, constructed at a staggering cost of $9.8bn and being touted as a symbol of Telangana pride, was a crumbling testament to the BRS’ brazen corruption.

The campaign was a classic example from Kanugolu’s