lok-sabha-elections

Updated: Apr 21, 2019 13:38 IST

There have been many calls within the Congress asking Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to contest the national elections from Uttar Pradesh. Priyanka Gandhi, who has been tasked to lead the party’s campaign in eastern UP, hasn’t spoken her mind on the demand and left it to her brother and party chief Rahul Gandhi to take the call.

‘Let’s see. Let there be some suspense for now!’ he said in an interview to Hindustan, a sister publication of Hindustan Times.

On previous occasions, Rahul Gandhi has made it clear that the primary goal that he had set for sister Priyanka wasn’t the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but to get the party in fighting shape and win the 2022 UP state elections.

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But Priyanka Gandhi has been getting bundles of requests from party workers to take the poll plunge.

Like when she was interacting with party workers in mother Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli constituency last month. Priyanka, who had been asked to contest the election from Rae Bareli, shot back smiling: “Why not Varanasi”.

That riposte had reignited buzz around her poll plunge, and a possibility that she might face off with Prime Minister Narendra Modi who represents the temple town in Parliament.

Priyanka Gandhi’s role, however, hasn’t been limited to Uttar Pradesh. The 47-year-old, who is seen as a formidable campaigner, has been holding road shows and addressing meetings in key constituencies elsewhere too. She was in Kerala this week to counter a shrill campaign by the BJP.

“He is a black belt, a trained pilot, ace diver and mountaineer. He doesn’t like any publicity,” she said about her party boss who she underlined, was a lot more well-versed with epics and puranas than “the so-called custodians of faith and culture”.