Meet the team that decides LK’s policy

Apart from the party organisation, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate LK Advani has a core team working overtime to fine tune his strategy to go with his bid for the country’s top post.

The team operates from the capital under the supervision of former journalist Sudheendra Kulkarni and the BJP’s IT cell national convenor Pradyut Bora, the first IIM grad to join politics.

The team analysed many campaigns in India and abroad, especially Barack Obama’s success. Its members’ work areas are earmarked, from technology to content and analysing and researching policy to collating inputs.

The team began with mainly online activity, but is now supplementing it with an offline campaign.

It is a group of young professionals, all volunteers, “except me and Kulkarniji”, Bora said, adding, “They have left corporate careers for political work.”

Bhanuchandra worked as an e-governance consultant with Price Waterhouse Coopers. He quit the job to get involved in politics. He prepared the Vision 2025 document for Tamil Nadu and now assists Advani’s team in research.

“I have always been interested in politics and wanted to contribute in some way. When I came to Delhi, I checked out this office and liked it. I quit my job and took up this work,” he says. Bhanu intends to continue “at least” till the elections. “After that, I don’t know. I shall see,” he says.

Then there is Mallika Noorani, who has taken a break from Standard Chartered Bank to manage the content on Advani’s website. She and Bhanu studied in the US.

Mallika wanted to do something meaningful apart from her job and wanted “a view of politics from the inside”. When she read Advani’s autobiography, she decided to be in his team. She is not giving up her job for this, however. “I am on a six-month sabbatical since October,” she says.

There are other young, budding professionals too. Robin Rappai is a software engineer who worked for two decades in various companies around the world before settling down here.

Anay Joglekar, who was working fulltime at the Israeli embassy, has also chosen to work for Advani. Anupam Trivedi coordinates volunteer-related activities. Zorawar Singh, who studied international relations at the Johns Hopkins University, provides the team inputs on international affairs and strategic issues. Mohan Rao is doing MBA from IIM-Indore and Vaibhav Agarwal from IIM-Lucknow.