Uttar Pradesh elections: Will Priyanka Gandhi as 'CM face' help Congress revive its fortunes?

NEW DELHI: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is leading the Congress campaign for Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, on Friday sprang a surprise as she pitched herself as the party's chief ministerial face in the state.
However, it is still not clear if the Congress general secretary will be making her electoral debut and contest the assembly elections.
"Do you see any other face from the Congress party," Priyanka said when asked who would be the party's chief ministerial face in UP polls.
When pressed further to clarify, Priyanka said: "Can't you see my face visible everywhere?"
She was speaking at the launch of party's manifesto for the youth of Uttar Pradesh. The party has promised to build a "new UP" driven by the strength of the youth, fill the "massive backlog" of jobs in the public sector and provide 20 lakh jobs of which eight lakh would be for women.
Priyanka Gandhi, however, did not confirm if she would be contesting her first elections and said, "We have not yet decided."
While Priyanka Gandhi as CM face in UP may be a significant development within the party, the big question is will it help the Congress, which is now almost a fringe player in the state.
Priyanka, who has launched the "Ladki hoon, Lad Sakti hoon (I am a girl, I can fight)" campaign to woo women of Uttar Pradesh in a big way, faces an uphill task with the Congress way behind its rivals.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has already emerged as the principal challenger to the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP which is going all out to retain power.
The Congress had put up a very dismal show in 2017 assembly elections winning only 7 seats out of the 105 it had contested in the state.

The Congress had then tied up with the Samajwadi Party. However, the alliance failed miserably with Akhilesh Yadav's party also suffering a huge loss down from 224 seats in 2012 to 47 seats.
Compared to its main rivals in the state - the BJP, Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party - the performance of the Congress was the worst in 2017.

Little wonder, this time around Akhilesh Yadav has ignored the Congress and instead Samajwadi Party has formed an alliance with several small parties.
The Congress, however, has said that it will be open to a post-poll alliance to keep the BJP out of power.
When asked about the possibility of supporting other parties, Priyanka Gandhi said the party would certainly look into it if the situation were to arise after the elections.
She, however, added that for the Congress, priority would be to implement its vision for youth, especially women, in Uttar Pradesh while extending any such support for government formation.
Dwindling fortunes
In fact, Congress's fortunes in the politically important state have been on the decline since 1991 when it could manage to win only 46 seats in the assembly.

The grand old party has lost ground not just in the state, but also in its old bastion of Amethi and Rae Bareli.
In 2012, the Samajwadi Party won 11 of the 14 seats it contested in Nehru-Gandhi bastion while the Congress could manage victory in ony two of them.

In 2017, the SP lost big in the region and was reduced to 2 seats. However, the Congress still did not gain. It was the BJP which managed a strong foothold in the region winning 10 out of the 14 seats. The Congress tally stayed at 2.


The BJP victory in these seats was comprehensive, with the saffron party winning 5 seats with a margin of over 10,000 votes and another 4 seats with still bigger margins.

Thus it is evident that Priyanka Gandhi has a formidable task at hand if she wants the Congress to stay relevant in the state's politics.
Priyanka has been working in the state since 2019 when she was made the Congress incharge of eastern Uttar Pradesh. In 2020, the entire state was put under her watch.
Priyanka has since then tried to galvanize the cadres and has on several occasions hit the road to protest against the Yogi Adityanath government.
How much of a difference will these factors and Priyanka's campaign make to the party's falling fortunes will be known on March 10, when the votes will be counted for the assembly polls.
Polling for the 403-member Uttar Pradesh assembly will be held in seven phases from February 10 to March 7.