Lucknow: There was a time when former comrades and alumni of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) ruled the roost in the Uttar Pradesh Congress. Many of them were associated with the All India Students Association (AISA), the students’ wing of the CPI(M-L) Liberation, which traces its roots to the Naxalbari uprising.
They made the leap of faith and ideology to enter what the Left considered a party of the bourgeoisie: the Congress. They soon came to be seen as Rahul Gandhi’s team in the Congress before he attached them with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to help her in her Mission UP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
They have been left out in the cold now as Rahul Gandhi has revamped the Congress in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the assembly election early next year.
At a meeting of Uttar Pradesh Congress functionaries at the party headquarters in Delhi on Monday, AICC general secretary in charge of organisation K.C. Venugopal said the state Congress was divided by factionalism and needed to free itself from it now. Rahul and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge were on the stage.
What caught the attention of party leaders was the absence of Priyanka. She had always attended meetings related to the Uttar Pradesh Congress in the past seven years. None of her core team members were present either.
Several party leaders ThePrint spoke to saw this as a clear indication that the Congress is preparing to place the responsibility for its 2027 Uttar Pradesh campaign largely in the hands of Rahul Gandhi’s team, rather than in the hands of the team that had effectively run the state organisation under Priyanka since 2019.
The appointment of Rajendra Pal Gautam as the new UP in-charge has strengthened that perception. Gautam, who joined the Congress after leaving the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in 2024, is considered close to Rahul’s close aide Alankar Sawai.
The six new co-in-charges of different zones are also seen within the party as Venugopal’s choices: former Uttarakhand MLA Sanjeev Arya, former Madhya Pradesh MLA Kunal Choudhary, Delhi Congress leader Abdul Hannan, former NSUI national president Varun Choudhary, Rajasthan leader and former MLA Jagdish Chandra Jangid, and Delhi Congress leader Abhishek Dutt.
Seven years of Priyanka’s team
Priyanka’s sway over the Uttar Pradesh Congress organisation dates back to 2019, when she was appointed the party’s general secretary in charge of eastern UP.
Despite the Congress’s weak electoral performance, winning just one Lok Sabha seat in 2019 and two Assembly seats in the 2022 elections, Priyanka’s core team continued to exercise considerable influence over the party’s state organisation and political decision-making.
Sandeep Singh, Priyanka Gandhi’s personal secretary and a former JNU Students’ Union president, was regarded as a key link between her and the state organisation. His close associates Dheeraj Gurjar, Pradeep Narwal and Tauqeer Alam were appointed as AICC secretaries and became closely involved in UP affairs.
Rajesh Tiwari, a leader considered close to former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, also served as an AICC secretary in the state.
Another member, former JNU Students’ Union president Mohit Pandey, was associated with Priyanka’s social media operations, while Anil Yadav was given a key role in state organisation.
Together, these leaders formed what party insiders described as Priyanka Gandhi’s core UP team.
Even when Avinash Pande replaced Priyanka as the state in-charge before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, much of the organisational network remained intact. According to party insiders, the team continued to exercise considerable influence over appointments and electoral decisions.
The equation began changing after Sandeep Singh was sidelined last year. He was considered an important channel of communication between Priyanka and the state organisation.
However, even after his exit from the active organisational setup, several AICC secretaries and other members of the old core team influenced decisions related to Uttar Pradesh.
Party insiders say former state president Ajay Rai and former in-charge Avinash Pande also had limited freedom in making key organisational appointments. That arrangement now appears to have changed ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections.
A senior UP Congress leader said Priyanka Gandhi’s team had effectively come to dominate the state unit. “The UP Congress had become synonymous with Team Priyanka,” the leader said, claiming that the group influenced appointments of district presidents and even several ticket decisions.
According to the leader, recommendations from this team played a significant role in ticket distribution during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the 2022 Uttar Pradesh polls and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The leader also claimed that the same group influenced several state-level appointments.
Some senior leaders, including Jitin Prasada, R.P.N. Singh and Lalitesh Pati Tripathi, had reportedly felt sidelined because of differences with Team Priyanka and eventually left the Congress.
“After seven years, the UP Congress has finally got freedom from this team,’” the leader said.
However, another senior leader has a different view. The leader acknowledged that the Priyanka Gandhi-led team failed to deliver the electoral revival the party had hoped for and that several leaders blamed the group for getting sidelined, but he argued it would be unfair to view its tenure only through the lens of failure.
“Several young leaders were given Congress tickets in the 2022 Assembly elections who otherwise may never have imagined contesting on a Congress ticket,” the leader said.
The team also helped the party build organisational structures across all 75 districts, something the Congress had struggled to achieve consistently over the previous two decades.
“Therefore, it is not correct to say that this team only harmed the Congress in Uttar Pradesh,” the leader said.
At the same time, the leader questioned whether the new leadership structure would be able to deliver similar organisational depth.
According to the leader, there does not yet appear to be strong coordination between the newly appointed in-charge and the state president. The new team would also need time to understand the political and caste equations across all 403 Assembly constituencies.
“Priyanka’s team was stronger when it came to research and ground-level information,” the leader said.
Where are core team members now?
The members who were identified with Priyanka Gandhi’s core UP team currently do not have clearly defined organisational assignments in the state.
AICC secretaries Dheeraj Gurjar, Pradeep Narwal and Tauqeer Alam have not been given a specific UP responsibility for now and are planning to increase activities in local politics in their respective home states.
Sandeep Singh continues to be an AICC member from Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh, but does not currently hold a formal organisational assignment in the state. Mohit Pandey has also not been given a major organisational role and is no longer part of Priyanka Gandhi’s social media team.
Another key member Dinesh Singh, whom Sandeep Singh considers his mentor from his Allahabad University days, had been serving as the party’s in-charge of administration (Prashasan Prabhari) since 2020.
However, he was removed from the responsibility last year. Singh remains associated with the UP Congress but currently does not hold any organisational post.
Similarly, Shahnawaz Alam, another Allahabad University alumnus, is currently an AICC secretary in charge of Bihar but holds no organisational position in Uttar Pradesh. He was also considered a core member of Priyanka’s team during her tenure as Congress general secretary in charge of the state. He is now eyeing a seat to contest the polls in UP.
Anil Yadav, meanwhile, remains active in Uttar Pradesh and is preparing for the elections. He is also involved in research work for Priyanka and was recently given responsibility for Prayagraj during the party’s ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’ programme, but it was given by the AICC.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)