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Will Priyanka queer the pitch for Modi?

WILL Priyanka Gandhi Vadra be able be regain her ‘illaqa’ ? This issue will be at stake during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, particularly in central and eastern Uttar Pradesh where Priyanka has been given a role to perform.

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Rasheed Kidwai

WILL Priyanka Gandhi Vadra be able be regain her ‘illaqa’ ? This issue will be at stake during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, particularly in central and eastern Uttar Pradesh where Priyanka has been given a role to perform. Eastern UP has 30 parliamentary seats, including Varanasi, which elected PM Narendra Modi in 2014.

In 1999 Priyanka alone had demolished her uncle Arun Nehru, a BJP nominee pitted against Capt Satish Sharma. Addressing a public rally then, she had delivered a brutal put-down. “Mujhe aap se ek shikayat hai. Mere pita ke mantri mandal mein rehte hue jisne gaddari ki, bhai ki peeth mein chhura mara, jawab dijiye, aise aadmi ko aapne yahan ghusne kaise diya? Unki yahan aane ki himmat kaise hui. (I have a complaint. A man who was a traitor in my father’s Cabinet, who stabbed him in the back, how did you let this man into your area? How did he have the guts to come here?)”, she asked the voters.

Priyanka further told the stunned audience, “Yahan aane se pehle maine apni maa se baat ki thi. Maa ne kaha kisi ki burai mat karna. Magar main jawan hoon, dil ki baat aap se na kahun to kisse kahun (I spoke to my mother before coming here. She told me not to speak ill of anyone. But I am young, and If I cannot say what is in my heart to you, then to whom else can I speak?)”.

Priyanka’s remarks were so fierce that even an orator like Atal Bihari Vajpayee failed to blunt the attack. Vajpayee, who was then PM, visited Rae Bareli a day after Priyanka’s speech. In a dig at Priyanka, he remarked he was ‘scared’ to venture into someone else’s ‘ilaqa’. But it was too late. Nehru’s fate had already been sealed. He was defeated.

In the same year, Priyanka again displayed her acumen while campaigning in Bellary, an industrial town in Karnataka, that gave Sonia Gandhi a mandate despite Sushma Swaraj’s spirited efforts. There was speculation that she would humble Sonia. But a day before campaigning ended, Priyanka arrived and the entire township turned up to hear her. Sushma knew she had lost already.

On the eve of the 2004 General Election, the Congress was in poor shape. It hired a professional agency which told the Congress president that if Rahul and Priyanka plunged into campaigning, only then did the Congress stand a chance to edge out the Vajpayee-led NDA. Rahul chucked a lucrative consultancy job in the UK to formally enter politics in early 2004. The Congress, under Sonia Gandhi, sprang a surprise, scoring a victory.

For the past several months, in many Rahul utterances, Priyanka stamp was hard to miss. She was instrumental in engineering a patch-up of sorts between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot with the two staking their claim to chief ministership.

Priyanka’s task for 2019 is to queer the pitch for PM Modi, who represents Varanasi in the Lok Sabha as well as UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who hails from Gorakhpur. If the big two can be pinned down in eastern UP, the BJP will be deprived of two key campaigners in the rest of the country during the crucial last lap of campaigning. A good showing for the Congress in UP would be bad news for the BJP which is hoping to make maximum gains in the country’s most populous and politically significant state.

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