Priyanka comes face to face with growing resentment among her close lieutenants
With the grand old party touching its new low during the last UP Assembly and later the parliamentary elections, winning just seven and one seat, respectively, due to growing resentment within the cadre, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is also incharge of the party in Uttar Pradesh, came face to face for the first time with the resentment amongst her own top coterie.
Interestingly, Priyanka also ended her three-day tour without giving even a minute to the senior leaders of the party who were either sidelined or kicked out by UP Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu on allegations of their involvement in anti-party activities. These leaders wanted that all the senior Congressmen should be brought into the mainstream if the party wanted to perform satisfactorily in the coming UP Assembly elections.
Though the senior leaders denied any differences or untoward incident during Priyanka’s visit, but sources said that three senior leaders of the party — one the most confidant lieutenant of Vadra, another senior office-bearer and the third who holds a key post in UPCC — hurled abuses at each other right before the Congress general secretary in one of the meetings during Vadra’s visit. They almost clashed but to avoid any further embarrassment, Vadra intervened after which the three leaders took their seats but not before blaming each other for the recent debacle of the party in the panchayat elections.
Surprisingly, as per sources, the AICC pushed huge funds through UPCC to finance the candidates so that at least some seats could be won and the party could be placed in a better position to make its claim as contender in the 2022 Assembly elections but they faced a total washout except for three seats in veteran Congress leader Pramod Tewari’s area and one seat in Congress MLC Deepak Singh’ area. Some leaders, on condition of anonymity, accused senior leaders of not transferring the full money to the candidates.
The sources further said that many senior leaders and workers who had blessings of Priyanka’s close lieutenant working at UPCC were also upset with the recent visit of Vadra, especially with her claim that the party was open for alliance with any party to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party. These leaders, already engaged to make their claims for Assembly ticket through wall writing, social media posts etc., were upset by Vadra’s statement of alliance as it would push them out of the race as their seats could go to the SP, whose candidates were runners-up in the last Assembly elections.
It may be mentioned that Vadra’s statement of alliance also confirmed reports of UPCC chief Ajay Kumar Lallu and senior leader Naseemuddin Siddiqui meeting SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav a few months back. Though Siddiqui later denied meeting Akhilesh but sources said the two leaders went to meet the SP chief at the behest of Priyanka to carry out talks on possible alliance between the two parties.
A senior leader of the Congress claimed that some former MLAs and MPs, including Siddiqui, were in regular touch with SP leaders and in case the talks on alliance failed, they could switch sides and contest on SP tickets as they were well aware that Congress would not perform well in the coming Assembly elections.
