"Resigned from the IAS in protest. Trying to stay on the right side of history," says his profile on platform X.
That is Sasikanth Senthil, the Congress candidate for Tiruvallur Lok Sabha constituency.
Congress released the fourth list of 46 candidates for the upcoming elections on Saturday evening. Sasikanth Senthil's name figured in that list.
Meanwhile, a video posted by him on platform X on Saturday has him making a reference to Mandal Commission and how it hurt the RSS like a "burglar stung by a scorpion."
But this ex-bureaucrat is not a rabble-rouser, but soft-spoken. No rhetoric.
Senthil told The New Indian Express that he found the country going in the wrong direction under a “fascist” and “majoritarian” government. "I spoke about what is wrong loudly."
Senthil said he chose the Congress party since he believed in the party’s ideology and the Constitution of India.
“I’m happy working shoulder to shoulder with a leader like Rahul Gandhi,” Senthil said.
He belong to a village in Tiruvallur, had his education at Chennai, completed engineering course before he went on to clear his civil services exams.
Caste discrimination is a nation-wide threat and not pertaining to Tamil Nadu alone. Tamil Nadu is fortunate enough to have had tall leaders like Periyar that it would be easy to take forward the message of anti-caste movement easily, he said.
Sasikanth Senthil was credited for, among other factors, helping the Congress storm to power in Karnataka in the assembly polls held on May 2023. But before the Karnataka polls, he had joined and served the Congress party during the 2021 Tamil Nadu assembly polls where the alliance led by the DMK and Congress came to power.
As The New Indian Express had reported, during his stint in Karnataka, Senthil Kumar focused on the “40 per cent commission” campaign, strategically targeting the BJP-led government and Chief Minister Baswaraj Bommai by posting attention-grabbing posters, which caused a sensation across the State. Senthil Kumar tendered his resignation from the IAS on September 6, 2019, and joined the Congress in November 2020.
Following the success in Karnataka, he was roped in by the party for the assembly polls in Telangana where too Congress came to power whereby Revanth Reddy replaced K Chandrashekar Rao as Chief Minister. But the key strategist's plans didn't succeed in Rajasthan where too he was appointed as Chairman of the Central War Room as BJP defeated Congress in Rajasthan.
Sasikanth Senthil served 10 years in the IAS in Karnataka before he quit the all India services and joined the Congress amid protests over amendments to the citizenship law in 2019.
In Tamil Nadu, IAS officers like U Sagayam and Sivakami had shown their inclination towards politics. But they couldn’t make much progress.
For Sasikanth Senthil it has been a journey from election war rooms to the battlefront. Can he pull it off?