New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka Gandhi has agreed to play a bigger role for the party in the upcoming assembly polls in the country’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh, sources said.
Sources said that Priyanka will be this time “finally” entering active politics through the UP polls. They said that she will be campaigning beyond the Nehru-Gandhi pocket borough i.e. Rae Bareli and Amethi whenever needed. Priyanka has so far campaigned in the two constituencies represented by her mother Sonia Gandhi and brother Rahul Gandhi.
Sources also said that a formal announcement on her role and campaign will be done soon. The party leadership, sources said, is waiting for vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s to return to India, who is currently outside the country on a short trip.
Sources said that Priyanka has been attending the party’s strategy meeting for UP polls along with Ghulam Nabi Azad, the new Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh.
It is also believed that Azad had submitted a report to the both party president and Priyanka regarding the latter’s role in the polls.
Priyanka’s office will be in Anand Bhavan in Allahabad, the ancestral home of the Nehru-Gandhi Family, which is now a museum, sources said.
Azad had earlier publically favoured Priyanka campaigning outside Amethi and Rae Bareli for the assembly polls. "I do hope that she will definitely campaign in some other places as per time available to her," he had said.
Election strategist Prashant Kishor too had suggested that Priyanka Gandhi should be made the party’s face for the UP polls.
44-year-old Priyanka is regarded as the party’s “Brahmastra”, who, several top leaders say can help in regaining lost ground for the Congress in the politically important state.
The Congress party, which managed to bag only 28 seats in the 2012 assembly polls, sources said, wants to be the kingmaker this time.
Several top Congress leaders had in past favoured Priyanka getting into active politics but the Gandhi family could not decide on her role. They have said that Priyanka has the potential to emerge as a mass leader. An Assembly election in the most populous state of the country is due early next year.
In Uttar Pradesh, Congress had secured just two seats in the last Lok Sabha elections with party chief Sonia Gandhi and 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.
