Prashant Kishor (file photo)
A collaboration with Congress by Election strategist Prashant Kishor was not feasible, but he has now enlisted his former associate in the role.
As for the 2024 national election, a senior Congress leader said that a decision will be made "in due course." Sunil Kanugolu is charged with planning the Congress's campaign in 2023, starting with the state elections next year.
Following meetings with the three Gandhis, Mr Kanugolu, who was part of the team that managed Narendra Modi's 2014 campaign, won the new assignment.
Having been a Kishor associate, Kanugolu has worked in the past for the BJP, DMK, AIADMK and Akali Dal.
PK had met with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in April and May last year, shortly after the Bengal election. It was discussed whether PK could join the Congress full-time as a consultant, since his only political stint so far was with Nitish Kumar's party.
The Congress resorted to Kanugolu after losing several rounds of negotiations with PK.
Initially, Mr Kanugolu was reluctant - he was also working with Akalis, a Congress rival in Punjab - but has since agreed to the deal.
"Our feedback system was poor. We just got the numbers (surveys) from our data team but the mechanism to fix the issues and the areas where we were lagging wasn't effective... and the messaging ...that's where Kanugolu will help the party," a senior leader was quoted as saying to NDTV.
"For now, Sunil will handle the Karnataka and Telangana assembly elections scheduled in 2023," the leader added.
Mr Kanugolu worked with the BJP in 2014, then the DMK in 2017. He is credited with the DMK's spectacular show in the 2019 national election. Mr Stalin's "Namakku Naame (we for ourselves)" campaign was a smashing success.
Kanugolu switched from DMK to AIADMK following the 2019 elections.
It is even more significant that he has recently switched to the Congress after close associations with the BJP and its leadership in many states.
The ace strategist broke the news of the collapse of the Congress-PK talks when he publicly disdained Rahul Gandhi's leadership and took several shots at him.
It is not known why the talks collapsed. One theory relates to trust issues and differences between Rahul Gandhi and Prashant Kishor, who had handled UP elections for the party earlier in 2017.
His campaign consulting company I-PAC has been distancing itself from him for months now and he is now in the process of transitioning to a more political role.
As Mr Kishor's outfit IPAC is faced with turbulence in its relations with Mamata Banerjee's party, his rival has landed the Congress assignment.