'Congress CM in UP, Coalition in Delhi': Will Rahul’s High Risk Priyanka Strategy Give High Rewards?

New Delhi: Hinting at a larger role for Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in Uttar Pradesh beyond the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi said her entry into the political arena will usher in a Congress chief minister in the state.

“I have not sent Priyanka and Jyotiraditya (Scindia) for just two months... Now she will work to establish a Congress chief minister in the state," Gandhi told reporters in Amethi, soon after Priyanka was announced as the party’s general secretary for eastern UP. Scindia has been put in charge of western Uttar Pradesh.

Baring his expectations from the state, the Congress chief said the party will not only work to bring a Congress government in UP, but also a coalition government in Delhi.

Priyanka Gandhi’s surprise political plunge is being seen as a reaction to the SP and BSP leaving the Congress out of its UP alliance. The Congress, buoyed by its recent wins in three Hindi heartland states, has shown its willingness to go full-throttle in response and will contest on all 80 Lok Sabha seats.

Rahul said as much in Amethi. “The Congress party is not going to play on the back foot anywhere, it will play on the front foot. It is fighting for its ideology. The new UP AICC team lead by Priyanka & Jyotiraditya will herald the dawn of a new kind of politics in the state,” he said.

Priyanka's formal entry into politics suggests that Congress is banking on her charisma to revive itself in the UP, where it has struggled to make any real political inroads in recent years.

But her task will be mammoth as she has been thrown directly into the UP dangal and will be pitched directly against the BJP's two biggest faces - Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose constituency is Varanasi and chief minister Yogi Adityanath, whose political home is Gorakhpur.

Then there is the challenge posed by the regional powerhouses SP and BSP, who left Congress out of the alliance. But Rahul said the Congress harbours no animosity against the alliance partners as they all share a common goal – to remove the BJP from power.

“I have full respect for Mayawatiji and Akhileshji. All three of us have the same goal of defeating the BJP. But we have to fight for the ideology of the Congress party, and so we will fight in UP with full force,” he said.