With parliamentary elections scheduled sometime around April next year, a big section of Congress leaders is confused whether Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is still the general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh or she has stepped down after the party’s worst ever defeat in the last assembly elections in the state and now remains UP in-charge just on paper.
The party won just two seats in the UP assembly elections in 2022 and soon after the results came, the high command took the resignation of the then UP Congress Committee president Ajay Kumar Lallu.
Sources said that many leaders of the party were shocked last Monday when they came to know that Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had resigned as UP in-charge a year ago. She herself informed the party colleagues about this at a review meeting of Uttar Pradesh held in Delhi on Monday, when some leaders of the state approached her regarding certain organisational issues in the country’s politically and electorally important state.
Some senior leaders claimed that Priyanka Vadra had put in her papers after the party’s dismal performance in the 2022 UP assembly elections in which the Congress managed to win just two of the 403 seats it contested. It was the worst-ever performance of the grand old party in the country’s most populated state that holds the key to power at the Centre. Uttar Pradesh, with about 20 crore population, elects the highest number (80) of the total 543 lawmakers to the Lok Sabha.
The party leaders claim that Congress has been functioning without an All-India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of Uttar Pradesh for over a year now. They also point to the absence of Priyanka Vadra in any activity or meeting held under the banner of UP Congress Committee, including the recent UP Jodo Yatra kicked off from Saharanpur last Wednesday. The UP Congress leaders point out that when Ajay Rai took charge as UPCC head, Priyanka did not attend the function even when she was still party in-charge of UP on papers.
The Congress had divided the party’s UP organisational unit into two zones – East and West – in January 2019 for better management ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Priyanka Gandhi was then appointed general secretary and given the charge of East UP while Jyotiraditya Scindia (now a Bharatiya Janata Party member and a Union minister) was assigned the responsibilities of West UP. The grand old party won just one seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with former Congress president Sonia Gandhi retaining her Rae Bareli constituency.
The party suffered a massive setback after the then Congress president Rahul Gandhi lost to Union minister Smriti Irani from the family pocket borough of Amethi by over 50,000 votes. However, he won from the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala. It is not clear yet if Rahul Gandhi will again contest from Amethi or leave the seat for Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and fight the Lok Sabha poll from Wayanad once again. There is also suspense over Sonia Gandhi contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Rae Bareli due to her health issues.
Apart from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 39 leaders attended the December 18 review meeting at the party headquarters in Delhi. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi were present in the meeting. Sources said that during the meeting, Rahul Gandhi questioned the demand of UP leaders for having alliance with Samajwadi Party or Bahujan Samaj Party in the coming parliamentary elections. “Some of you are demanding seat adjustment with SP and some with BSP and I agree that four or five of you might also became MP but what the party would gain in Uttar Pradesh,” questioned Rahul, expressing surprise that none of the leaders from UP, including Ajay Rai or even veteran Pramod Tewari, came with suggestions on how the party could be strengthened in UP, but instead everyone was looking to secure his own future to become MP with the support of SP or BSP.
Rahul said that the party was lacking in UP as not a single leader wanted to lead from the front and everyone was looking on how to ensure victory from his or her own seat with support of regional parties.
The sources also said that in the meeting, Imran Masood, who quit BSP recently to join the Congress, apologised for ditching the party. Masood is an influential Muslim leader from the Saharanpur belt. It may be mentioned that almost 90 per cent of ‘parachute’ candidates who joined Congress before parliamentary or assembly elections had either joined other parties after polls or were not seen in any party function or even at UPCC headquarters since then.
