Asked whether Priyanka would contest, Rahul said it would be her decision.

“UP is central to building a new hope filled & compassionate India. The new UP AICC team led by Priyanka & Jyotiraditya will herald the dawn of a new kind of politics in the state. We will offer the youth in UP a dynamic new platform to transform the state,” he tweeted in the evening.

Wednesday’s development comes amid speculation about a further consolidation within the Nehru-Gandhi family: many in the Congress expect Varun Gandhi to join the party within a few days.

Priyanka has been campaigning in Amethi and Rae Bareli since 1999, and Congress workers have been demanding at least since 2005 that she enter active politics.

She will now be unshackled from her self-imposed restraint on electioneering anywhere other than these two constituencies, and is poised to emerge as one of the top campaigners in the party.

While Priyanka will be focusing on Uttar Pradesh after she formally takes charge in the first week of February, she will campaign in select constituencies in other states as well.

The Congress has identified around 30 winnable seats in Uttar Pradesh and will be concentrating its energy and resources on them.

Scindia, who played a key role in the Madhya Pradesh elections, is a dynamic leader whose popularity cuts across regional barriers and whose stature has grown fast. His appointment has elated Congress workers in the region.

The veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad, who had so far been looking after party affairs in the heartland state, has now been given charge of Haryana, another state the Congress is yearning to wrest from the BJP.

K.C. Venugopal, general secretary in charge of Karnataka, has been given additional charge of the party organisation, a responsibility Ashok Gehlot used to handle before he became Rajasthan chief minister.