Congress' last trump card

Congress cadres may be agog that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will be joining the campaign for the Uttar Pradesh elections soon. However, the long shot strategy is not likely to have any great immediate impact as early pre-poll indicators give the Congress Party seats in the single digit as a distant fourth, behind the BSP, BJP and SP. Any performance above such low expectations may be creditable and Priyanka might even claim the honour if that happens. She is the last trump card the Grand Old Party holds and it must play that card ahead of a crucial poll defining which way the nation may be inclined to vote in a BJP versus the rest kind of scenario.

If the Congress is to battle it alone since a “mahagathbandhan” on the lines of Bihar may not be possible in Uttar Pradesh, it then needs all the help it can get to stay relevant on the national scene after the 2014 rout in the Lok Sabha elections.

If Priyanka does not enter the fray now, after taking two years to mull over getting into active politics, she might be letting down a party that has laid much store by the Nehru-Gandhi family members leading it from the front. While Priyanka’s entry might lead to certain redefining of Rahul Gandhi’s role as the star campaigner, which he has been in the time since the last general elections as several states from the Northeast to the extreme south went to the Assembly polls, there is little reason to believe the Gandhi family would ever fall out in public as the SP’s Yadavs did. The national party, with only a minor victory to speak of in Puducherry, has much ground to cover if it is to retain any hope of leading a united Opposition against the ruling BJP in 2019. If Priyanka’s entry rekindles that hope, she would have achieved something.