Striking the right chord
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s first press conference was deferred because of the Phulwana attack. Instead, she issued a very evocative statement, reaching out to the families of those martyred, stating that she could understand their pain—the implicit message being that she had also lost two members of her family to terror attacks. The brief message has struck a chord and also shows how instinctively she can read the moment right and react to it with empathy. While her first press conference will happen eventually, those waiting to know her politics should wait for her book, Against Outrage, which she had penned last November and which is supposed to hit the stands in March.
CWC Meet: Dateline Gujarat?
The Congress is planning to hold a working committee meet in Ahmedabad soon. One reason for this is to take the battle to Narendra Modi’s home turf. This will also be Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s first CWC meet, for, as general secretary, she automatically becomes a member of the party’s highest decision making body.
Trojan Horse for Scindia?
Should Jyotiraditya Scindia be happy with his elevation as party general secretary in charge of western Uttar Pradesh? On the one hand, it gives him a higher profile, linking his elevation with that of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s. However, unlike her, he has a Lok Sabha election to contest and that too from another state. Will he be able to focus on his own constituency, as well as deliver the 39 constituencies of western UP that have been handed to his charge—a region where the Congress currently has zero Lok Sabha seats. Hence, my question, is he happy about his elevation or is he looking at it as a Trojan horse?
Between the lines
The launch of Kumkum Chadha’s book, The Marigold Story, was a high profile one, with Farooq Abdullah, L.K. Advani, P. Chidambaram, Jaya Bachchan and Dinesh Trivedi in attendance. The book, which was launched by Vir Sanghvi and Javed Akhtar, has interesting political profiles sketched by a veteran journalist, who draws on his experiences and interactions to pen down these engaging sketches laced with interesting anecdotes, such as how Rajiv Gandhi hated marigolds—and in the end, it was a marigold garland triggered with explosives that took his life.