Veteran Congress leader Digvijaya Singh can’t understand why his party won’t give Priyanka Gandhi Vadra a serious organisational role despite her ‘tremendous, enormous political ability’.
“She certainly deserves greater responsibility. Today she is a general secretary without a defined organisational charge. I don’t understand why. She should be entrusted with a serious responsibility within the AICC,” the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister said last week in an interview to my colleague, Esha Mishra.
Millions of Congress workers and leaders have the same question in their minds. They can’t, however, say so publicly, lest it be interpreted as a lack of confidence in Rahul Gandhi. Singh, a Congressman and Gandhi family loyalist for 55 years, doesn’t run such risks. Anyway, the high command sent him an unambiguous message when it chose to field Meenakshi Natarajan, not him, in the Rajya Sabha bypolls. A Rahul confidante, she is known for her ostentatious display of simplicity and poverty.
Singh’s remarks about Priyanka’s underutilisation in the Congress have only highlighted the big puzzle party leaders can’t solve. The Gandhis are known to be a close-knit family, with the siblings displaying a strong bond in public. That makes Priyanka’s amorphous role in the party all the more perplexing. When she formally took the plunge into politics in January 2019, she was appointed All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh—the region comprising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency, Varanasi, and chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s home turf, Gorakhpur. She was doomed, if not designed, to fail. Lok Sabha elections were just 10 weeks away. As expected, the Congress fared miserably. As if one failure wasn’t enough, Priyanka was then given charge of the entire state for the 2022 Assembly elections. The result was predictable again.
Why would Sonia and Rahul send Priyanka to virtually meet her Waterloo in Uttar Pradesh? From 2006 to 2007, Rahul was running UP Congress. In the run-up to the 2007 Assembly elections, I remember meeting the party’s ticket-seekers who were interviewed by him. They would come out scratching their heads.
“How would I know how many families have LPG cylinders in my constituency and how many electricity connections? Politics doesn’t work like this,” they would tell me something along these lines.
For all the hype about Rahul’s ‘new politics’, the Congress ended up with 22 seats, three less than the previous election. He led the campaign in 2012 elections, when the party secured 28 seats in the 403-member Assembly. He blamed it on weak fundamentals then, promising to build the organisation. By 2017, he virtually gave up on that and chose to ride piggyback on Akhilesh Yadav.
It took Rahul a decade to realise the impossibility of the Congress’ revival in Uttar Pradesh. By 2019, he was not even sure about his own constituency, Amethi, and opted to contest from a second seat in Kerala. So, what prompted him to make Priyanka eastern UP in-charge 10 weeks ahead of the election, and, after the loss, retain her for the subsequent Assembly polls? Was it supposed to be baptism by fire? Or was Rahul convinced that his sister could do in 10 weeks—or three years—what he couldn’t in over a decade? Anyway, electoral losses in Uttar Pradesh did take the sheen off Priyanka a bit, dampening the enthusiasm of those who saw the Congress’ redemption under her leadership.
Growing whispers in the Congress
In December 2023, Priyanka was divested of the charge of Uttar Pradesh and retained as general secretary “without any assigned portfolios”—the organisational equivalent of a minister without portfolio.
This was what Singh referred to in his interview with ThePrint, asking why Priyanka has not been given a defined organisational charge. It doesn’t enhance her stature. It ends up projecting her as privileged—someone with power but without responsibility—or as a leader who needs protection after the Uttar Pradesh fiasco. Either way, it doesn’t help her. In a curious move that raised many eyebrows in the party, Priyanka was made chairperson of the screening committee for Assam—essentially, her job was to shortlist party candidates. She was arguably the first Gandhi ever to be a part of a state screening committee. That, too, for Assam! There were no dots to join. She ended up getting associated with a third electoral defeat.
Why would Sonia–Rahul let the Congress undermine Priyanka when even her rivals in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) see her as a worthy opponent? They talk about her calm, composed style, her articulation and sharp wit. They see in her the traits of a mature politician who could make even home minister Amit Shah laugh with left-handed compliments in the Lok Sabha. Once, when an angry Shah asked Rahul to learn from his sister, he seemed to mean it. Priyanka strikes a chord with the people. She was the one who would constantly reach out to the so-called old guard such as Ahmed Patel when Rahul-led young turks went after them.
Rahul is not an organisation man. He has been running the party for two decades—directly or indirectly—but the organisation has remained in shambles. As per an analysis by my colleague, Apoorva Mandhani, the number of Congress MLAs has come down to around 676 in 2026 from 1,204 in 2008.
He is not a 24×7 politician like PM Modi or HM Shah. He frequently needs sabbaticals for me-time. Which politician would cancel scheduled interactions with students in three cities for an extended stay abroad? Rahul has done exactly that. And it’s just the latest instance of him skipping important events and programmes for foreign travels.
Well, the country and the Congress have come to terms with not having a full-time Leader of the Opposition. Even when he is in India, party colleagues find him standoffish and inaccessible. Nobody expects him to change now. That’s exactly why there are growing whispers in the Congress about what leaders see as underutilisation of Priyanka. Singh has only voiced the frustration of that majority in the party.
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Three answers
Why not let Priyanka take a shot at rebuilding the party organisation? It was expected of party president Mallikarjun Kharge, but he got preoccupied with a smaller dynasty of his own. He has remained the Congress president and also the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha; his son, Priyank, is a prominent minister in Karnataka; and his son-in-law, Radhakrishna Doddamani, became a Congress MP from Gulbarga in 2024. At 84, the Congress president decided to re-enter the Rajya Sabha last month. Priyanka can’t replace Kharge, of course. If a family member has to return to the party’s helm, it would be Rahul alone. Congress leaders, therefore, believe that Priyanka is best-suited as the AICC general secretary (organisation), a post currently held by KC Venugopal. That would give her a say in all organisational matters, leaving Rahul relatively free to travel around the country to expand his muhabbat ki dukaan. She can focus on ‘party jodo’ while he carries on with his ‘Bharat Jodo’ mission.
Rahul loves to fight on the BJP’s home turf: Hindutva, Moditva (Hindutva plus development/welfarism), and national security. But a bigger role for Priyanka would enable her to play to the BJP’s key vulnerability—the absence of faces to retain the party’s current connect with women voters in the post-Modi era. Out of 30 Cabinet ministers at the Centre, the BJP has just two women, Nirmala Sitharaman and Annapurna Devi. It’s anybody’s guess how many women voters they can influence. Out of 17 BJP CMs, Delhi’s Rekha Gupta is the only woman. And there are only two women among 36 party presidents of the BJP in states and Union Territories—in Manipur and Haryana. Thanks to his free foodgrains and other welfare schemes, PM Modi enjoys the loyalty of women voters. The BJP, which has somehow failed to promote women leadership, may struggle to retain this votebank in the post-Modi era. Priyanka playing a more prominent and pro-active role in the Congress may further queer the pitch for the BJP.
That brings us back to the original question: Why is the Congress underutilising Priyanka? I might have spoken to at least 50 Congress leaders in the past few months trying to find an answer. I haven’t gotten a clear one yet. Some blame Sonia’s ‘putra moh’ or love for her son. A good number blame Rahul’s insecurities. I, however, tend to buy the argument of a third category of leaders. They say that both Sonia and Rahul have Priyanka’s best interests in mind and there is no deliberate attempt to underutilise her potential. Rahul is not insecure about Priyanka, but “his people” are, they say.
“If Priyanka is given a bigger role, say, of general secretary (organisation), all these people around Rahul Gandhi would lose their power and clout. They won’t let her come. You may think Rahul Gandhi controls them. The fact is that they control him, telling him what he wants to hear and keeping him in his make-believe world. A weak Congress and weaker Gandhis are good for these people,” one of these leaders told me.
So, what’s next for Priyanka? Congress leaders are unanimous that she won’t ever question her brother. If it gets too frustrating, she may want to play Doris Day: “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be… the future is not ours to see… que sera, sera, what will be, will be.”
Post-script: On a walk in the Nehru Park Saturday evening, as I was thinking about the young women leaders of the BJP with the potential to become a Sushma Swaraj or Vasundhara Raje in the future, I suddenly realised that my throat was parched. I stopped thinking and walked in desperation, as all three water coolers installed at various points on the 2.8 km stretch were dry. I remembered Delhi CM Gupta’s remark about water evaporating in Delhi. I was told the next day, Sunday, that those coolers seldom have water. And that’s about a park in South Delhi, visited by ministers and civil servants. There was no point looking for the three engines. I did learn about water evaporation in my science classes in school, but it took me many decades to feel its impact. I rushed home from Nehru Park, shortening my walk. Thankfully, my car engine worked.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)