Can Priyanka Gandhi Vadra revive the Congress in UP?

For Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in 2022 will be an acid test for her political future

New Delhi: PV Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister (PM) and the Congress president when a group of party leaders met him to demand that Pranab Mukherjee, then union minister and deputy chairman of planning commission, should be packed off to a gubernatorial assignment in Uttar Pradesh (UP).

Two weeks before her press conference, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had soaked in every bit of what is widely seen as the biggest political moment of her 32-month-old career as the Congress general secretary. (PTI)

Rao heard them patiently and replied, “We have already lost half of our voter base to Mulayam Singh Yadav. If Pranab starts speaking Hindi, the remaining voters will also run away.”

The story, apart from the scholar-politician’s terrific wit, underlines how the Congress grappled to stay relevant in the India’s most populous state in the post-Mandal politics.

The erosion in the heartland

Two years before Rao had become the PM, the Congress’s tryst with power had ended on December 5, 1989. Mulayam Singh Yadav had succeeded Narayan Dutt Tewari as the state’s chief minister (CM).

A new normal set in the most populous state. There was a meteoric rise of regional and caste-based political outfits such as Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party (SP), as well as of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while the Congress haplessly watched its core vote-base — Brahmins Muslims and Dalits — splitting between these three rivals. (Broadly speaking, Brahmins went to the BJP even though all the state’s five Brahmin CMs have been from the Congress; Muslims shifted to the SP; and Dalits went to the BSP).

A year after the switch of power in UP, in Bihar, the other big playground of Mandal and Kamandal politics, the last CM of the Congress, a Brahmin stalwart Jagannath Mishra, paved way to firebrand Lalu Prasad Yadav. The same pattern replicated itself — where, broadly speaking, Brahmins moved to the BJP, Muslims to first the Janata Dal and then Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and Dalits first time Janata Dal, and then fragmented between the Lok Janashakti Party, Janata Dal (United), BJP, and RJD.

Since then, neither UP nor Bihar has had a Congress CM.

A new era descended due to what the late Pranab Mukherjee and other veterans would often term as the Congress’s perennial uneasiness in tackling caste-based aspirations of regional parties. The Congress, which was most comfortable being a large vessel taking along myriad ideas broadly centred around a left-of-the-centre ideological platform, suddenly faced the realities of Mandal and Kamandal politics.

UP Congress under Priyanka Gandhi Vadra

More than three decades later, with the party’s leadership firmly in the hands of the fourth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi family, Congress’s latest overtures in UP aim to create a brand-new voter base — farmers and women, with an attempt to frame support base in terms of class and gender rather than the caste or subcastes.

On October 18, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, during a special press conference in Lucknow, announced, “The Congress will give 40% tickets to women in the forthcoming UP elections.” The dais had only women leaders and the backdrop sported a slogan, “Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon I am a girl, I can fight)”. The Congress leader added that she wants to make women, who constitute roughly half the vote bank, a “full-fledged partner in power” while keeping the option of her contesting in electoral politics open.

Two weeks before her press conference, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had soaked in every bit of what is widely seen as the biggest political moment of her 32-month-old career as the Congress general secretary. In Lakhimpur Kheri, a district 80 km away from Lucknow, a car mowed down protesting farmers, triggering violence and death of eight people on October 3. The son of the junior union minister for home affairs, Ajay Mishra, has been arrested and the Opposition now wants the minister to be removed.

The incident, coming close on the heels of wave of mass protests against the three contentious farm laws and a prolonged political row between the BJP and the Opposition on the question of farmers, happened just six months before the state goes to polls to elect its next government.

And in this turmoil, the nondescript district known for scorching summer provided a valuable ground for the Congress. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was detained at a shabby guest house in Sitapur before her arrest. She was detained for over 90 hours, the Congress launched nationwide protests, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka met the victims’ families before the Gandhi siblings went to President Ram Nath Kovind to demand Mishra’s ouster.

For the uninitiated, this is not the first time that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra rushed to UP after an incident to meet affected families and raise a voice of protest on their behalf. In June last year, she was in Sonbhadra to meet families who lost their kin in a clash over land. There too, the UP police detained her and refused entry initially. Later, after she met the families, the Congress leader announced, “I want to tell them (UP officials) that I have met the families, and for now I am going but I will be back.”

And just six months later, she was back in UP to protest over the Hathras gang-rape and murder case. During this protest, she took the wheel, protected a party worker from getting beaten up and hugged the rape victim’s mother.

Can the Congress gain electorally?

Undoubtedly, the big challenge for the Congress is translating all of this into actual votes, in UP and elsewhere.

In the last UP assembly polls, the Congress bagged just 6.25% popular votes and seven seats in UP. In the national election, the Congress got just one seat but maintained its vote share at 6.36%. The then Congress president Rahul Gandhi lost his family borough Amethi (he got elected in Wayanad) to union minister Smriti Irani. Only Sonia Gandhi won from Raebareli.

Political consultant-strategist turned aspiring politician, Prashant Kishor, has already cautioned that 5 ₹3 Congress’s revival would not be easy in UP and those who are expecting Lakhimpur Kheri would boost the prospects of a Congress-led Opposition are staring at a “big disappointment”. Taking to Twitter, Kishor explained that this was because problems within the “Grand Old Party” (GOP) were deep-rooted, and without any quick fix.

“People looking for a quick, spontaneous revival of the GOP-led opposition based on the Lakhimpur Kheri incident are setting themselves up for a disappointment. Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes to the deep-rooted problems and structural weakness of the GOP,” Kishor tweeted on the October 3.

Senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid claimed that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had turned Lakhimpur Kheri into a national issue and claimed that in UP, “Congress is the key Opposition,” indicating the inaction of the SP and BSP.

But a section of the party feels that an alliance with SP could have been a better chance against the formidable BJP led by PM Narendra Modi and CM Yogi Adityanath. Yet, so far, there is no indication that the SP is interested in any ties with the Congress, especially since the experiment of a coalition in 2017 did not work out, for either party. In the absence of a coalition, a four-cornered fight might be perfect recipe for the BJP that is expected to play the development and Hindutva card.

But for Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, UP will be an acid test for her political future. With Rahul Gandhi’s vote-catching ability already under scanner, her appeal will be tested in the battleground of UP next year. If she can vastly improve the Congress tally, a section of the Congress leaders would feel reassured with the question of future leadership.