Why Priyanka Gandhi’s Assam role matters for Congress ahead of Assembly elections

On January 3, the Congress party appointed Priyanka Gandhi as chairperson of the candidate screening committee for the upcoming Assam assembly polls. To those familiar with the workings of the Congress party, the move was intriguing.

Not only was Priyanka, the only Congress general secretary with no allocated responsibility within the organisation for over four years, assigned a key task, but the announcement also marked the first-ever instance of a member of the party’s first family, the Nehru-Gandhis, taking up the job of screening potential candidates for a specific state.

As former Congress presidents, Priyanka’s brother, Rahul Gandhi, and her mother, Sonia Gandhi, are ex-officio members of the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC).

The CEC gives the final stamp of approval to party candidates for elections to the Lok Sabha and State assemblies once shortlisted names are forwarded to it by state screening committees. Priyanka’s role as chairperson of the Assam screening committee would mean that her party’s CEC, which includes Sonia and Rahul alongside party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and other leaders, will sit in judgement over names that her team, which includes Imran Masood, Saptagiri Ulaka, and Sirivella Prasad, recommends to the central leadership.

Morale booster for Congress

More importantly, Priyanka’s Assam assignment signals both the importance that the Congress now attaches to wresting the state from the BJP and, in many a view within the party, the willingness of the Nehru-Gandhi family to stake its prestige in a contest that is bound to see vicious attacks made against it by the BJP’s key poll mascots – Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former Congressman with a long-standing personal grudge and abundant bile against the Gandhis, particularly Rahul.

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For the Congress’s Assam unit, depleted significantly of its once frontline leadership that switched to the saffron side in quick succession at Sarma’s behest, the assignment for Priyanka has come, in equal measure, as a morale booster and a cautionary strike.

‘Crown of thorns’

A party MP from the state, who described Priyanka’s new role as a “crown of thorns”, told The Federal, “her presence signals that the high command is willing to invest everything it has in the Assam campaign, and so our workers are thrilled, but at the same time saboteurs within our party better watch out; so it is a very good move and we are confident that her involvement won’t be limited to short-listing candidates but she will also take charge of the poll campaign as a whole”.

Party insiders say the decision to put Priyanka in-charge of screening candidates is also an “insurance policy” against a fracas that the Congress – as also most other political parties – witness during poll season: that of party leaders being denied nominations accusing those responsible for candidate selection of “selling tickets”.

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The Congress has often been hit hard by such allegations ahead of key elections, and the most recent demonstration of this was during and after the Bihar assembly elections last October when scores of disgruntled party members who were denied a party ticket held prolonged protests accusing key Rahul aide and Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru, state Congress chief Rajesh Ram, and former legislative party chief Shakeel Ahmed Khan of selling tickets.

The Congress is yet to recover from that mêlée in Bihar and has recently suspended over three dozen rebel leaders who refused to let the matter die down even two months after the party was wiped out in the Bihar polls.

Ticket row clouds polls

“That tickets were sold is the easiest accusation to make in election time. Anyone, irrespective of his or her actual political standing, who is denied a ticket can make such an allegation. In Assam, this situation is complicated further because the BJP under Himanta has essentially become a party of former Congress people and so it is natural that many who are still in our party continue to get offers from the BJP to defect. During election time, you know how leaders change parties overnight and the most common reason they give is that tickets were being sold in their parent party while workers like them were being ignored,” a senior Assam Congress MLA said.

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The MLA added, “There are also factional pressures because each leader wants maximum of his supporters to get tickets and when that doesn’t happen, things become bad. If Priyanka is in-charge of candidate selection, we will be able to minimise, if not completely remove, such problems at least in candidate selection.”

Increased accountability

If the Assam Congress is elated with the charge given to Priyanka, a section of party leaders also worry about the political ramifications if, electorally, the Congress is vanquished yet again.

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“There is a reason why the (Nehru-Gandhi) family has always kept away from getting directly involved in candidate screening. Once you are picking candidates, your accountability towards the results increases manifold. Priyanka was general secretary in-charge of UP when the Congress had registered its worst-ever performance in 2022, and after that she kept away from getting directly involved in any state. Assam today is not the Assam of Tarun Gogoi; things are not going to be easy for us because aside from extreme polarisation, the entire electoral system has been compromised, and you can rest assured that Sarma and the BJP will try every dirty trick possible to retain power. For Priyanka to get so closely involved may be good for party morale and it shows her courage, but she is also taking a very big risk,” said another party functionary.

Priyanka set to boost campaign

Congress insiders say Priyanka’s involvement with the Assam poll campaign is also likely to be “much more” than the 2021 election when she made headlines with her limited but high-decibel canvassing, which also included headline-grabbing photo-ops plucking tea leaves with women tea-garden workers (an encore of that outing is also on the cards in the upcoming polls).

“Plans are being drawn up in consultation with her. She will campaign much more than last time even though Kerala (which Priyanka represents in the Lok Sabha) is also going to polls at the same time and so are other important states like Tamil Nadu and Bengal where she will be needed. We are confident that she will be able to divide her campaigning time in a way that allows her to cover all key regions of Assam without compromising on her campaign schedule in other states,” a party leader said.

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Congress leaders also believe that Priyanka's presence will help the party build a strong electoral narrative across Assam, stay consistently in the news, and keep the party unit on its toes while ensuring that coordination with prospective allies does not run into hurdles like the ones the Congress faced with the RJD in Bihar last year.