Santwana Bhattacharya By

NEW DELHI: Poll strategist Prashant Kishor wants Rahul Gandhi to be projected as the Congress’ chief ministerial candidate for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh election and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is his second choice. But the party is not amused.

Congress leaders are furious that Kishor, hired to fix the party’s strategy, “is acting too big for his boots” by trying to create a buzz. Kishor told leaders of the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit that either one of the Gandhis had to be the chief ministerial face if the party wanted to get more than 20 seats.

Meant to be the Congress’ prime ministerial aspirant for 2019, Rahul sounded embarrassed. “What can I say if you people speculate and write like this?” he said. For the 2012 Assembly polls in the State, handsomely won by the young Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul had wanted to run for Chief Minister but the party didn’t allow him to.

Now, five years down the line, Kishor, credited with scripting successful election strategies for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in 2015, has come up with the same proposal.

B ut P L Punia, the Congress’ Dalit face in the State and a Rahul confidant, angrily reacted: “Kishor has been hired to design the campaign strategy for UP polls, nothing more or less. We certainly did not hand him the mandate of candidate selection, let alone projection of our chief ministerial candidate.”

Now Congress leaders suspect he is pursuing a “Nitish agenda”. The Bihar Chief Minister is said to be nursing hopes of becoming the prime ministerial candidate of non-NDA parties in 2019. NCP chief Sharad Pawar has already endorsed him for the job.

“We’re wondering who he is working for. Is he trying to clear the way (for Nitish)? He has no locus standi to name the CM candidate,” said R P N Singh.

Kishor first floated the idea of projecting former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and then Priyanka in the polls. If Dikshit rejected the idea on the ground of her failing health, Priyanka never bothered to respond.

Sonia Gandhi “is dead against bringing her daughter into electoral politics”, a top female leader in the party claimed, adding that the Congress president has been quite candid about Priyanka’s “priority being her children”. Additionally, she also helps her mother and brother in their Rae Bareli and Amethi Lok Sabha constituencies.