Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is likely to be made in in-charge of Odisha in the coming days. As of today, she is the only general secretary of the 12 existing general secretaries “without any assignment portfolio” after she was divested of the crucial and prestigious Uttar Pradesh in December last year. Odisha will witness the general elections and the Assembly elections at the same time in the coming few months and as per Congress’ reading, the party is in a position to form the government in the state while winning at least 7 Lok Sabha seats from there.
Right now, the Congress has one MP and eight MLAs in the 147-member Odisha Assembly. If the assessment of the Congress leaders is correct and voters of the state vote as per Congress’ assumption and vote out the BJD, then the results will come as a redemption of sorts for Priyanka Gandhi Vadra who for many years toiled hard in UP, but without any success, with the Modi-Yogi factor denting the Congress’ fortunes massively. The fact that she was not given any assignment when the organizational reshuffle was announced by party president Mallikarjun Kharge has generated speculation within the party and outside that senior party leader and Priyanka’s brother, Rahul Gandhi has not been able to come on the same page as far as her professional working style is concerned.
When she was handling Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka’s close associates would regularly launch political attacks on the Samajwadi Party, which had upset SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. However, even though Rahul has to keep larger coalition compulsions in mind while dealing with Akhilesh, many in the UP Congress had stated that Priyanka was taking the right political steps by attacking Akhilesh as she was trying to recover the political ground that the Congress had lost in the state.
According to party sources, the possibility of her contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, was still a matter of intense deliberations. Reports by party leaders based in Uttar Pradesh indicate that the Congress was in a weak position in Rae Bareli, which for long, was represented by Priyanka’s mother Sonia Gandhi. It was this feedback, apart from her frail health, that also played a role in the senior Gandhi deciding to go to the Rajya Sabha.
Considering this scenario, Priyanka’s advisors are of the belief that rather than fighting from Rae Bareli and losing her maiden Lok Sabha elections, it was better for her to work in the organization for now and handle a state where the Congress is expected to improve its performance. The party’s campaign in Madhya Pradesh during last year’s Assembly elections too was heralded by Priyanka with high decibel public meetings in Jabalpur and Gwalior and her supporters had, at the time stated, that it was she who was handling the entire campaign. However, the Congress, to the surprise of many, failed to come back to power in the central state.
Her supporters believe that a win or a good performance in Odisha will add the much needed political asset to Priyanka’s repertoire that will help her to establish her credentials within the party more strongly. Earlier, she had been credited by a certain section for the party’s win in Himachal Pradesh in the 2022 Assembly elections. However, if she is given charge of the more challenging state of Odisha, and she is able to make an impact, that is likely to generate strong sentiments from her supporters to give her more say in the party’s affairs which is going through a churn right now.