Samikhsya Bureau
The signals from Congress president Rahul Gandhi during his last visit were clear that the party can no longer be marginalised to a non-pivot for a grand coalition, in case. Matching the occasion the euphoria created by the entry of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra into active politics connotes one thing that there has to be a changing political chemistry in India and more so in Uttar Pradesh, a state that controls the electoral fulcrum of India in Lok Sabha polls.
It was abundantly clear from Rahul Gandhi’s assertions in Bhubaneswar that Priyanka Gandhi might have been given the new role in UP but the party had her with for long and she was always at the background trying to heal the party that was, in a way painted by the National Democratic Alliance as a chronically ill entity nearing a terminal stage.
However, post the mammoth victory by the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014, the Congress under Rahul Gandhi could rediscover its fighting instinct during the last assembly polls in Gujarat where the party’s performance was bit frightening for the BJP. That resuscitation produced the results in the last assembly polls in five states gifting three major Hindi heartland states to the Congress.
Now, by taking Priyanka on board, officially, the party has perhaps tried to indicate that it cannot be outflanked by the emerging unity between the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh or under pressure to play a second fiddle. “But it will happen only if Priyanka Gandhi is able to strengthen the organisational roots in UP that Congress lacks when compared to other opposition forces like the SP or BSP,” said Pankaj Jha, a senior journalist based in Lucknow.
That was what abundantly clear from the upfront posturing by Rahul Gandhi when he was upping his ante, time and again, against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and simultaneously attacking the Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik for their “unholy alliance”.
Sources in the Congress say that Priyanka might visit Odisha, which means the party in the stateis poised to do a different math taking a leaf from the voters of Chhattisgarh who could vote out the 15-year-old Raman Singh regime. Anti-incumbency factor is bound to be a crucial cause for the Naveen Patnaik dispensation to be worried about.
