Priyanka Gandhi is out as Congress general secretary: What's next? Here's what we can expect!

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi is traversing an active political course for the past few years. Though her campaign didn't bear fruit in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls that held last year where Congress had a drastic debacle, her recent campaign drives in the states of Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka had played a vital role in the party's victory. As she is emerging to become a strong force in the Congress party, she is now on a course to widen her political persona.

Priyanka Gandhi was serving as the Congress general secretary in Uttar Pradesh and it has now come to a revelation that she has stepped down from the post to scale up her politics to a larger role. Priyanka Gandhi had moved her resignation in October 2022 before Mallikarjun Kharge took over as the president. According to reports, she had submitted her resignation to the then party chief Sonia Gandhi after a new team was constituted in Uttar Pradesh. 

Ahead of Kharge's taking over of the party's national presidency, Brijlal Khabri was appointed as the president of the Uttar Pradesh Congress unit on October 1, 2022. While Kharge became the national president on October 19, all general secretaries and in-charges have stepped down from their posts, making way to Kharge to set up his new fleet to run the organization under his leadership.

However, Priyanka Gandhi had resigned as the general secretary much before Kharge became the president with the view of setting a precedent to other general secretaries. While there has been no replacement yet till now for Priyanka Gandhi's post, it has been reported that Kharge is working out to constitute a new Congress Working Committee (CWC) and a team of general secretaries and in-charges to the states.

The political observers say that Priyanka Gandhi's decision to step down has displayed that she doesn't want to end up being an in-charge just for a state when the party needs a significant push at national level. She limited her visits to Uttar Pradesh and she was last seen in the state during her brother Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra's crossover in Uttar Pradesh. It was after stepping down as the general secretary that she got extensively involved in the Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka assembly polls. 

51-year-old Priyanka Gandhi was the main campaign face for the Congress party in Himachal Pradesh. In Karnataka, she had addressed around thirty rallies, more than Rahul Gandhi. During the election trail in Karnataka, she unveiled the party's promise of Gruha Lakshmi Scheme, which assured a financial aid of Rs 2,000 per month to all women head of households in Karnataka. 

It was one of the five major promises of the Congress party. As the party has recorded a stupendous victory in Karnataka and ousted the BJP regime, Priyanka Gandhi is all set to campaign for the party in the states that are bounding for the assembly polls later this year. While she has already been conducting rallies in the poll bound Telangana and Chhattisgarh, she will be visting another poll bound state Madhya Pradesh on June 12 to kickstart her campaign. 

As she is giving a new opening for her political career through intense campaigns and rallies, it is expected that the party's leadership would confer her a larger role. Her intense tours across the states have sparked a sharp speculation on whether she would be contesting in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

As the next step, Priyanka Gandhi would be given a berth in the party's highest decision making body CWC. She would also be awarded a post to manage the elections for the party. Furthermore, if Congress leader Rahul Gandhi loses his legal battle to overturn his disqualification as a Lok Sabha MP, that would ban him from contesting in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, it's highly likely that Priyanka Gandhi would contest in the general elections. 

 

Comments