Rae Bareli/Amethi. Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra may not have directly contested the election this time, but she is playing the role of a ‘non-playing captain’ very well in her family’s political bastion Rae Bareli and Amethi. She is not only in charge of the party’s campaign but is also the main strategist behind the scenes.
While addressing the public on both these seats, Priyanka Gandhi tries to connect with the people through her childhood memories along with describing the assassination of her father Rajiv Gandhi and the pain of her mother at that time. Besides, she also tries to mobilize people in favor of Congress by mentioning national issues.
The purpose of this entire exercise of Priyanka Gandhi is to ensure the victory of Congress candidate and brother Rahul Gandhi from Rae Bareli and party candidate Kishori Lal Sharma from Amethi. BJP has made Dinesh Singh its candidate from Rae Bareli, while Union Minister Smriti Irani is once again in the fray from Amethi.
The challenge before Priyanka Gandhi is to win the trust of the voters in both the parliamentary constituencies in a short time. He is trying to counter Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal in the Hindi belt and Bharatiya Janata Party’s discourse related to Ram Temple. Priyanka Gandhi is a strategist, speaker and people mobilizer here. He has been camping in Rae Bareli and Amethi for the last several days and is the center of headlines.
She also tries to connect with people by mentioning their personal struggles. Last week, at a meeting of party workers in Amethi, the Congress general secretary narrated the story of a woman sitting in the audience who wanted to educate her daughter but her father-in-law was against it. The woman did tailoring work to finance her daughter’s education and managed to get her graduated.
Priyanka Gandhi told the woman that she was inspired by her and then called her to sit on the stage. She also sometimes talks about her mother’s pain at the time of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in her street meetings. In one such meeting he had said, “I have never seen my mother smile the way she did when my father was around.”
In her meetings, Priyanka Gandhi tries to make people feel that she is among them and that she has an emotional relationship with them. Congress also wants to give the same message through its social media campaigns by running hashtags like ‘Rae Bareli ke Rahul’.
In her speeches, Priyanka Gandhi also repeatedly refers to the Munshiganj massacre of January 7, 1921, during the farmers’ protests. At the time of this incident his great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru had come to meet the farmers. She also mentions the defeat her grandmother Indira Gandhi suffered in Rae Bareli in 1977.
Priyanka Gandhi said in a recent meeting, “She (Indira) did not get angry with the people, but went back and won their trust…bring back the politics that was about the people.” In her speeches, Priyanka Gandhi does not forget to appeal to people to vote on issues that impact their everyday life instead of voting on religion, caste and emotional issues. She attacks Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister Smriti Irani equally.
Tags: Congress, Loksabha Election 2024, Loksabha Elections, Priyanka Gandhi
FIRST PUBLISHED: May 13, 2024, 22:30 IST