Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday approved the proposal for the appointment of chairman and co-chairman of the Central War Room for the upcoming Rajasthan Assembly elections.
IAS-turned-politician Sasikanth Senthil has been appointed as the Chairman of the Central War Room. Lokesh Sharma, Jaswant Gujar and Captain Arvind Kumar were appointed as co-chairmen by the Congress president with immediate effect.
Senthil had headed the Congress’ war room in Bengaluru and was one of the key strategists in the recently concluded Karnataka elections, where the Congress got a massive mandate, giving its best-ever performance in the state since 1989.
Senthil played a key role in formulating the narrative against the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government over corruption through various ways, especially the “40 per cent commission government” plank, the “PayCM” campaign, with posters featuring a QR code and a photograph of CM Bommai titled “PayCM” springing up across Bengaluru.
A native of Tamil Nadu and a 2009 batch Karnataka cadre IAS officer, Senthil had resigned from the IAS while serving as a Deputy Commissioner (DC) in the communally sensitive Dakshina Kannada district in September 2019, stating that it was “unethical” for him to continue in his line of duty “as a civil servant in the government when the fundamental building blocks of our diverse democracy are being compromised in an unprecedented manner”.
He severely criticised the the Narendra Modi-led BJP government’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) / National Register of Citizens (NRC) proposal, and had travelled across the country meeting people who had participated in the CAA protests. He later joined the Congress in 2020.
The assembly elections in Rajasthan are due later this year, where the BJP and the Congress are in a tough electoral contest.
In the 2018 Assembly polls, the Congress secured 100 seats, one short of securing an absolute majority. It formed the government in alliance with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).