WITH PRIYANKA IN SUPPORTIVE PLAY AND RAHUL AS PIVOT, CONGRESS EYES A TURNAROUND, FROM UP TO PARLIAMENT
Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra after the press conference announcing the latter's candidature from Wayanad. (Express photo by Anil Sharma)
Finally, after two decades of 'will she, won’t she', Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is going to make her electoral debut now. She will contest the Lok Sabha bypoll from Kerala's Wayanad, the constituency that her brother Rahul Gandhi has vacated so as to retain his Rae Bareli seat in Uttar Pradesh instead.
The development shows – if there was any doubt on that score – that Rahul would be the principal leader of the Congress (and the party’s prime ministerial face, whenever the moment comes). And that Priyanka would play a supportive role. It was imperative for Rahul to identify with the Hindi heartland, especially UP where, but for Rae Bareli, it had got wiped out in the 2019 polls. It is UP which has produced eight of India’s Prime Ministers so far, and has been the karmabhoomi of the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Priyanka has all along played a secondary role – though she is perceived by some quarters as more politically savvy of the two siblings. In 2004, it was “a family decision” that it would be Rahul (and not Priyanka) who would come into active politics and contest elections – with mother Sonia Gandhi making way for him in Amethi by shifting to the neighbouring Rae Bareli seat. At that time, the possibility of all three of them standing for elections was considered – but it was Priyanka who had apparently ruled it out. For 20 years, she nurtured both the Amethi and Rae Bareli seats on behalf of her brother and mother.
At one stage, during the recent Lok Sabha polls, there was a buzz that Priyanka would contest from Rae Bareli and that Rahul would fight from Amethi (where he had lost in 2019) in addition to Wayanad. But it was Rahul who chose the relatively safer Rae Bareli as his second seat, with the “family understanding” being possibly that Priyanka would fight whichever seat he would later give up.
Congress leaders Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi in Wayanad, to file the former's nomination papers to the Lok Sabha elections, in April. (Photo: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra/ X)
A quarter century ago, Priyanka had accompanied her mother to Bellary in Karnataka, where Sonia defeated the charismatic Sushma Swaraj (her daughter Bansuri Swaraj recently won from the New Delhi seat on the BJP ticket). Many women in Karnataka (and in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) would then look at Priyanka with nostalgia because she reminded them of her grandmother “Indira Amma”, the late PM Indira Gandhi. But today, most of the Indian people – with over half of them under 30 – has barely any memory of Indira except what they have read in the books.
Over the years, Priyanka had become known for her one-liners. In 1999, when Arun Nehru, her father Rajiv Gandhi’s cousin and one-time confidant, was contesting from Rae Bareli on the BJP ticket, she just asked the people there: “Are you going to vote for a man who betrayed my father?” Arun Nehru lost the election. He had fallen out with her father and joined hands with V P Singh who replaced Rajiv as the PM in 1989. She would give the occasional interview to keep the suspense alive about her future political role.
Cut to the 2024 polls, when Priyanka was noticed in a different way on the campaign trail – she began striking a chord among the audiences, drew crowds and was heard with interest.
Whether it was the poor who stood in scorching heat at the Congress's Dausa rally to hear her, or a section of the middle class that watched her on their TV screens in the comfort of their living rooms, they liked what they saw of her – and applauded her ripostes to Narendra Modi’s rhetoric. They called her an “achi vakta (good speaker), better than Rahul”.
Priyanka seems to be more measured and nuanced with her words. This is bound to provoke a comparison between the brother and the sister if both are seen together in the Lok Sabha. This may become more pronounced if Rahul does not agree to become the Leader of the Opposition (LoP), deciding against leading the party from the front.
Gandhis are a close-knit family—and are expected to go head-to-head against the government in Parliament, with Priyanka set to assist Rahul in the Lok Sabha (in the event of her expected victory from Wayanad). The 18th Lok Sabha may be thus more turbulent and would see sharper exchanges between the Modi government and Gandhis-led Congress which has virtually doubled its tally to 99 this time from just 52 in 2019.
With the Congress now on the upswing, the question that arises is this: Could the Congress not have come up with some out-of-the-box thinking and given Priyanka a different role?
It is UP that beckons the Congress – and Priyanka today. True, she made a disastrous start when given the charge of UP as the All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in the 2022 Assembly polls. The Congress could then win only 2 seats with its vote share plunging to just over 2 % in the state despite her decision to give 40% of the tickets to women amid the slogan “Ladki hoon lad sakti hoon”. The party had not made adequate planning and preparations to back its women-centric plank and campaign.
However, UP is sending out a different signal in 2024. Even though the Congress organisation has disintegrated in the state over the years, there seem to be signs of a public desire to see its revival. Unlike 2017, its alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) in 2024 was effective on the ground with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi displaying a chemistry in their joint meetings. While Akhilesh’s experiment of widening the SP’s “MY” base to rope in the non-Yadav OBCs – and Dalits – worked, the Muslim-Dalit combination would not have consolidated behind the SP as it did, without the Congress factor. The Muslim-Dalit-OBC equation (behind the INDIA alliance) has the potential to become a challenge for the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP dispensation in the 2027 Assembly polls. But the Congress would need to put at rest any apprehensions that the SP may have over its growth at the latter's expense. It will have to come up with a power sharing formula for UP (2027) as well as the national elections (2029).
The 2024 results, then, provide a rare window of opportunity for the Congress to rebuild the party in UP. Without its revival in the crucial heartland state, India’s grand old party cannot become a national player again. And yet, to have all the three members of the Gandhi family in Parliament at the same time (with Sonia being a Rajya Sabha member now) – something they had shied away from for two decades – is bound to raise questions.
Of course, the Congress reels off the list of dynasts who are now in the BJP. This may take the sting out of the BJP’s attack against the Congress's first family. Several regional chieftains have also defended their family-centric outfits – they ask what is wrong if a son or a daughter wants to follow in the footsteps of their parents who are political leaders? And that “Parivarvad” (dynasty politics) is an inescapable reality of Indian politics.
But, many young Indians do, and will, and should, ask the question: If this trend continues, a time will come (soon) when India’s democracy would be limited to a few hundred families! And what kind of a democracy would that be?
(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)
For the latest news from across India, Political updates, Explainers, Sports News, Opinion, Entertainment Updates and more Top News, visit Indian Express. Subscribe to our award-winning Newsletter Download our App here Android & iOS
2024-06-22T16:12:51Z dg43tfdfdgfd