The Congress is looking at Priyanka Gandhi to revive its fortunes in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections against the Samajwadi Party, the BSP and the BJP.
The Congress is looking at Priyanka Gandhi to revive its fortunes in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections against the Samajwadi Party, the BSP and the BJP.
The Congress party is directly and indirectly suggesting how her campaigning outside Amethi and Rai Bareli would help the party. After extensive field work, strategist Prashant Kishor has told the party that a member of the Gandhi-Nehru family must lead the electoral battle from the front and that the Congress to play the Brahmin or forward caste card.
AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is in-charge of the party affairs in UP, on Wednesday favoured Priyanka Gandhi campaigning outside Amethi and Rae Bareli for the state Assembly elections in 2017.
“I do hope that she will definitely campaign in some other places as per time available to her,” he told reporters.
He was asked whether Ms Gandhi, who has been focusing on the Assembly segments in Amethi and Rae Bareli so far, would be campaigning outside to help her brother, Congress party vice president Rahul Gandhi.
Mr Azad will be going to Lucknow on Thursday for a two-day brainstorming session with party leaders in the state on the strategy ahead. He has already said the Congress will project a chief ministerial candidate.
Meanwhile ,talking separately at the AICC briefing, senior party spokesman Ajay Maken said it was up to Priyanka to decide when she wanted to get into active politics.
He was asked to react on Mr Azad’s remarks earlier in an interview that there is an overwhelming desire among party workers to see that Priyanka Gandhi pitching along Rahul Gandhi in the Uttar Pradesh electoral battle.
In Uttar Pradesh, Congress had secured just two seats in the last Lok Sabha elections with Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mr Rahul Gandhi emerging victorious from their traditional seats of Rae Bareli and Amethi respectively.
The Congress is in political wilderness in Uttar Pradesh since 1989 following emergence of divisive ‘Mandal-Mandir’ politics and rise of the BSP, which took away its crucial Dalit vote base.
