All India Congress Committee poll strategist Sunil Kanugolu and his team have come up with a catchy name for their digital campaign website, kadakkupurathu.com — meaning get out — targeting Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan ahead of the Assembly election campaign.
People can voice their concerns against the ruling Left government through this interactive website.
The “get out” is a reference to Vijayan’s censure of the media contingent when he was scheduled to hold closed-door talks with the RSS and BJP leaderships in the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram, in 2017.
When the digital campaign targeting Vijayan and his government was launched on Monday, the office of the Opposition leader was under the impression that members of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee were behind it. However, when Congress leaders kept asking each other who was behind it, no one knew. It was then that the state Congress leadership realised that it was Kanugolu, the master strategist who helped the BJP and eventually Narendra Modi come to power in 2014. Kanugolu moved to Congress in May 2022.
A Congress leader in Kerala told The Telegraph that none other than Kanugolu can hit pay dirt by returning Vijayan’s 2017 outburst in the same coin.
“The Congress-led United Democratic Front has been in the Opposition for a decade now. If the Front has to topple Vijayan and his LDF government, we have to obviously come up with a catchy phrase that will symbolise Vijayan’s hostile relationship with the Kerala media,” said the leader.
Kanugolu had already activated the war room for the Congress campaign in Thiruvananthapuram more than two months ago. Contrary to what happened during the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, this time Kanugolu has set up the war room in a private office instead of the party headquarters, Indira Bhavan.
Within 24 hours of the website launch, more than 1.71 crore people expressed that the “LDF will go and everything will be fixed”, implying that the UDF may have a good chance. The website also has “charges” against the Vijayan government on the Sabarimala gold heist, farmer distress, drugs menace, public health, a massive public debt and communal actions.