Ahead of Lok Sabha polls, Congress unveils ‘trump card’ Priyanka

NEW DELHI: Playing his trump card, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday pushed his sister Priyanka Gandhi into taking the plunge into active politics by appointing her as the party General Secretary in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, where the SP-BSP alliance ahead of the Lok Sabha polls has pushed the Congress to the corner.
Priyanka Gandhi’s appointment, a gamble by Rahul, is aimed at galvanizing the Congress cadre in the state where it has been marginalised over the years and where the BJP swept a whopping 71 of the 80 seats Lok Sabha seats in 2014.
Shortly after the appointment, Rahul Gandhi told reporters that naming Priyanka Gandhi and Jotiraditya Scindia as General Secretaries for Uttar Pradesh was a “big step” to spread the party’s “real” ideology for poor and weaker sections and to rebuild its base.
However, he sought to strike a conciliatory note towards the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), saying the Congress will cooperate with them to defeat the BJP in whatever ways possible.
With this, Priyanka Gandhi, married to businessman Robert Vadra and mother of two children, makes a full-fledged entry into politics casting aside her earlier role that was mainly confined to the constituencies of Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli) and Rahul Gandhi ( Amethi ).
From the first week of February she will assume her new charge in eastern Uttar Pradesh, considered the home turf of Chief Minister and BJP’s ‘Hindutva’ poster-boy Yogi Adityanath .