“There is no alternative to the Congress. What the people suffered during the non-Congress rule in the last 27 years is evident. Only the Congress worked for the development of the state and the only signs of progress that you see happened during the days of our Chief Minister N D Tiwari.”
That’s Shiela Dikshit speaking in Lucknow on her first foray into Uttar Pradesh after being chosen as the Congress Party’s chief ministerial candidate for next year’s elections to the state assembly.
Of course Dikshit is wrong, by a long shot. People of UP had suffered ever since independence through lack of almost everything – education, jobs, healthcare, drinking water, sanitation, you name it. In fact, the reason for the utter deprivation that the state had been subjected to over decades can mostly be laid at the doorstep of the Congress. This despite the fact that the state had given eight of India’s 14 prime ministers since independence. It was UP, along with Bihar and Rajasthan, that managed to pull down India’s growth story to the low single digit GDP figures in the 1960s and 1970s. No marks for guessing which party, except for very brief interregnums, was in power in all three states during those decades.
The last time the Congress won in UP was in 1985 and the five-year rule saw five chief ministers at the helm ending with Narain Dutt Tiwari who lost to Mulayam Singh Yadav in December 1989. In the 2012 assembly elections the Congress won just 28 of the 403 electable seats (the 404th is reserved for an Anglo-Indian who is to be nominated by the governor). It was placed a woeful fourth with just 11.8% of vote share. In the parliamentary elections of 2014, the Congress fared even worse. Its tally was two out of 80, the two winners being Congress president Sonia Gandhi from Rae Bareli and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi from Amethi. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) of which it was part, had a vote share of 7.5%.
Truth to tell, the Congress is in dire straits in Uttar Pradesh, as in much of rest of India. No amount of prevarication by Dikshit or anyone else is going to help the party win back the confidence of the people in such numbers that it regains power in Lucknow. But after two long years during which it was slithering down a slippery slope into near-oblivion, you notice some very faint, nevertheless significant, signs of resurgence. For once you can’t blame the Congress for not trying. And that’s saying a lot for a party whose morale is at its lowest.
Prashant Kishor, the political strategist who masterminded Nitish Kumar’s stunning victory in Bihar in 2015 and played a prominent role in Narendra Modi’s epochal march to power in Delhi a year before that, is planning the Congress campaign in Uttar Pradesh. That’s the first sign of professionalism in Congress election strategy as far as anyone can remember. It’s still a dynasty and family oriented party where power is handed down from father/mother to son/daughter. Chief ministers and presidents and secretaries of state units have more often than not brought up and nurtured their close relatives to take over from them. In fact, this Congress culture has been gleefully accepted by many regional parties, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) being the prime example.
But with Kishor as strategist, the campaign has assumed a bold, new look. The selection of Dikshit, rumours of which had been floating for some time, and the appointment of yesteryear film star Raj Babbar as president of the party’s state unit are two such developments. Ghulam Nadi Azad, veteran Congressman and leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha, is the High Command’s pointsman for the elections.
Babbar is not exactly a Congressman of strong ideologies – he had cut his political teeth in the SP – but is a major crowd-puller and in UP such things matter. Dikshit is not originally from UP but is linked to the state through marriage. Besides, she is a three-time chief minister of Delhi and brings in enough experience to administration that will satisfy those who are inclined to look at such thing. She had also won her debut election from Kannauj, which is Mulayam country, in the 1984 Lok Sabha polls.
But the big factor going for Dikshit is her surname. Her father-in-law Uma Shankar Dikshit was a famous Congressman from Unnao in UP. He had served in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet and was also governor of Karnataka and West Bengal. More importantly, he hailed from a noted Brahmin family. Although Shiela Dikshit was born Shiela Kapoor into a Punjabi family and is a Khatri by caste – the Khatris are mostly tradespeople and considered well below the chart-topping Brahmins in the Hindu caste hierarchy – her marriage to Vinod Dikshit gave her the status of a Brahmin. Brahmins form more than 10% of the state’s electorate and the Congress is sending the right signals to this segment through Dikshit. 
The naming of a chief ministerial candidate itself has been a major departure from the usual strategy of India’s Grand Old Party which has conventionally left it to the High Command to do that job after elections. Even in the last Delhi assembly elections, when Dikshit had already completed three successful terms as chief minister, the party had not declared her as a chief ministerial candidate although a victory could have automatically propelled her to that chair. For such a party to announce a candidate for chief ministership more than seven months before elections is a sign that new ideas are being experimented. 
All these developments pale before the biggest trump card that the Congress is getting ready to play in UP – Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. For more than a decade now the younger daughter of Sonia Gandhi has been on the fringe of electoral politics, confining her campaigning to her mother’s and brother’s constituencies. But all signs now portend that that is going to change. Priyanka is now attending most meetings concerning UP elections and is co-ordinating efforts between the state unit and the High Command. Dikshit herself had openly called for Priyanka to come to the aid of the party in the state.
Unlike her brother Rahul, who continues to be the butt of many a political joke because of his mostly disjointed statements, Priyanka is a fine communicator and has a knack of appealing to both the urban and rural electorate. Not for nothing has she been compared to Indira Gandhi because if there is one person who can lay claim to the Gandhi charisma it is Priyanka. 
Priyanka’s entry is not without problems though. If Dikshit is taking full advantage of her acquired surname to appeal to UP voters, Priyanka must be striving hard to shed hers, albeit figuratively. For, husband Robert Vadra is under investigation for some serious frauds and his demeanour till date had not helped matters either. He has tried to keep as low a profile as possible but that is quite a difficult ask for a man in his position. Unfortunately, the few times he had directly faced the media Vadra has not exactly covered himself in glory. 
The Justice Shiv Narain Dhingra commission of inquiry, which is investigating some dubious land deals in Haryana involving Vadra’s companies, is likely to submit its report sometime in August. There is vehement defence coming from the Congress saying the inquiry is politically motivated but Justice Dhingra is a highly respected retired judge of Delhi High Court and his findings are certain to carry a lot of weight. 
Although Dhingra has said his brief is only to inquire into the alleged wrongdoings of officials of Haryana government, implicit in that is their reported collusion with Vadra and others. There is bound to be a legal battle once the commission submits its report and it could take several months, if not years, before a final verdict is passed. However, the damage for Vadra, and by extension to Priyanka and the Congress Party, would have already been done.
As mentioned earlier, all these efforts – Prashant Kishor as campaign strategist, Dikshit as chief ministerial candidate and Priyanka as star campaigner etc – combined are unlikely to bring the Congress Party back to power in UP. But if it can give the other three major contenders – the SP, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Bahujan Samajwad Party – a run for their money, then it is well worth a try. That, perhaps, is all what the Congress can hope for in UP 2017.