Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra didn’t campaign for the Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections because she wanted to focus on strengthening the party in Uttar Pradesh, a leader familiar with the development said.
“She is keen on rebuilding and reviving the Congress in Uttar Pradesh,” he said.
The Congress has been relegated to the margins in the country’s most populous and politically important state after being ousted of power in 1989. It has, over the years, ceded space to the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, then Congress president Rahul Gandhi lost from his family bastion of Amethi to Smriti Irani of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by over 50,000 votes. The Congress managed to win only one seat in UP—Rae Bareli—the constituency of current Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Priyanka Gandhi had campaigned extensively in the national elections, addressing rallies in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Assam, Haryana and Kerala. She had taken a formal plunge into active politics on January 23 this year after she was appointed party’s general secretary and given the charge of eastern UP.
Citing her social media engagements, the Congress leader quoted above said Priyanka Gandhi is keen on reviving the party in UP and wants to stay focused on her functions.
Not only Priyanka Gandhi, her mother Sonia Gandhi too stayed away from campaigning in both the states. Rahul Gandhi, though, addressed six rallies in Maharashtra and two in Haryana.
Sonia Gandhi, who turns 73 this December, was scheduled to address a public rally last Friday in Haryana’s Mahendragarh. It was supposed to be her first rally after taking over the reins of the Congress in August, following her son Rahul Gandhi’s resignation after the party’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha polls. But Sonia Gandhi didn’t attend the rally, instead it was Rahul Gandhi who addressed the meet.
She did not campaign in Maharashtra either, the other state going to polls with Haryana. Voting for Maharashtra and Haryana polls was held on October 21, the counting of votes will take place on October 24.
Sonia Gandhi has in the recent years curtailed her public functions and had last addressed a rally on June 12 in Rae Bareli to thank voters for re-electing her. Prior to that, she spoke at a public meeting in Rae Bareli on May 2 while campaigning for the polls.
Sonia Gandhi, who is also the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), had last campaigned for a state election in Telangana on November 23, 2018.
On August 2, 2016, she was forced to call off a road show in Varanasi mid-way due to ill health and a shoulder injury. The road show was organized to launch the Congress campaign for the UP assembly elections.
She had also stayed away from canvassing in Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand, Manipur (February-March 2017) and subsequently Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh (December 2017) and also Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland (February 2018).
After nearly 20 months of break, Sonia Gandhi once again hit the campaign trail by addressing a rally at Bijapur in Karnataka on May 8 last year.
