Priyanka's Election Debut: Wayanad's Battle Is Beyond The Ballot

The upcoming Lok Sabha by-election for Kerala’s Wayanad seat has thrown open an intriguing prospect for the Congress party.

Irrespective of the outcome, the Nehru-Gandhi family will win, and the Congress party will lose. The victory or defeat of its national general secretary Priyanka Gandhi will only have a degree of impact on her formal acceptability as the de facto second-in-command behind her elder brother Rahul Gandhi.

Rahul has been taking all major decisions in the party ever since he stepped down as its national president following another debacle in the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, even without holding any formal post in the party. Now that he is Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, he had no hesitation publicly announcing way back in June that Priyanka would be the Congress candidate for the Wayanad seat, without bothering for the party to make a formal announcement, which was made only on October 15. Wayanad seat had fallen vacant following Rahul Gandhi's decision to retain Rae Bareli seat after he won both these seats in the June Lok Sabha elections.

Technically, Priyanka Gandhi is only one among equals as the party has 12 national general secretaries. However, she was informally anointed as second-in-command when Rahul Gandhi as the Congress president named her as the national general secretary in January 2019. Her formal entry into politics was as the party general secretary, leaving none in doubt that she is being groomed for a bigger role in the party.

The script clearly defining the roles of the two Gandhi siblings was conceived by their mother Sonia Gandhi. According to that script, Rahul Gandhi was to become the prime minister of the country and Priyanka Gandhi would run the party. Although Rahul Gandhi made a winning debut in 2004 after winning the family bastion Amethi, his alleged slow learning of the nitty-gritty of politics delayed Priyanka's entry into politics for 15 years. It is no secret that Sonia Gandhi did not want the siblings to come in the way of each other. Priyanka was then seen as more politically astute compared to Rahul and was often compared to her grandmother Indira Gandhi.

Sonia Gandhi's original script went haywire in 2014 when Rahul Gandhi was first projected as the party's prime ministerial face with the advent of the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate. Modi has since been blocking Sonia Gandhi's prime ministerial aspirations for her son with his hat-trick of victories.

Wayanad may not provide Priyanka with a smooth passage to the Lok Sabha in her electoral debut, considering she is locked in a keen triangular contest. The state's ruling Left Democratic Front, which is otherwise part of the Congress-led Indian Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), is in no mood to let her become an MP without giving her a tough turf fight.

Priyanka's probable victory, however, might come at a cost for the Congress party's long-term interest as she will further stifle the growth of talented younger generation leadership.

Rahul Gandhi's ascendency too had come at a hefty price for which the party is still paying in terms of the Congress’s failure to regain its glorious past. Rahul Gandhi's prolonged status as a leader on probation meant several talented and ambitious younger generation leaders were kept at bay, lest they overshadowed Rahul Gandhi's progress as the supreme leader of the Grand Old Party.

While Rahul Gandhi's contemporaries were never appointed as cabinet ministers during the decade-long Manmohan Singh government, the likes of Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sachin Pilot were denied chief ministership of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan respectively in 2018 as they were viewed as too good and capable of overshadowing Rahul.

Over the past many years, several young ambitious and talented leaders were virtually forced to part ways with Congress in frustration as they found their roads blocked. The party, which still is under the control of Nehru-Gandhi family loyalists, felt ageing leaders like Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot, Capt. Amarinder Singh, Tarun Gogoi, N.D. Tiwari and K. Rosaiah held no threat to Rahul Gandhi's progress. These senior figures were named chief ministers of their home states, overlooking claims of popular younger generation leaders who might have increased the Congress party's popularity and acceptability among the masses.

The end result was while potential threats to Rahul Gandhi were side-lined, the party lost power in key states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Assam, Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh.

A similar situation may further start unfolding as and when Priyanka Gandhi eventually replaces Mallikarjun Kharge as the AICC president on a future date, definitely before the 2029 general elections. This might mean that rootless leaders will continue to rule the roost in the Congress party and those with the potential to become mass leaders would be overlooked.

There is this famous story about the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the great-grandfather of Rahul and Priyanka. In 1959, Nehru decided to make his daughter Indira Gandhi the Congress president with the idea of anointing her as his political successor during his lifetime. Nehru rebuffed one of his senior ministerial colleagues who questioned Indira Gandhi's ability to lead the party by asserting that she came from the same family and upbringing that made him the leader of the Congress party.

Comparisons between Indira Gandhi and her granddaughter Priyanka Gandhi have stopped being made. Even the ardent Congress supporters and family loyalists refrain from doing so now as Priyanka has proved in no uncertain terms that she too has the same upbringing as Rahul Gandhi and at the most she is at par with him, definitely not more talented than her brother.