Narendra Modi’s sharp analysis of Sonia Gandhi in 1999 interview

Election strategist Kishore has proposed a blockbuster initiative for the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, but this is a potentially high-outcome idea. The Priyanka option is the political equivalent of ‘heroic medicine’ for the party

Now working with the Congress, Prashant Kishore, the election strategist who was part of the Narendra Modi campaign in 2014 and the Nitish Kumar mission in Bihar in 2015, is focusing on Uttar Pradesh. His plan is to revive the party in India’s biggest State, in terms of population and Lok Sabha seats. From an impressive 21 seats (out of 80 seats) in 2009, the Congress fell to merely two seats in 2014. Only Congress president Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli) and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi (Amethi) managed to win.

Rahul Gandhi was given a spirited fight by Smriti Irani of the Bharatiya Janata Party, who has been visiting the constituency over and over again after her defeat and looks set to lock in the Congress vice president in 2019. In State Assembly elections, the Congress has been a no-hoper, consistently finishing a poor fourth among the four major parties in the State. In the 2012 Assembly election, Rahul Gandhi campaigned for many months and even sought to build an OBC constituency for the Congress — which has historically depended on Brahmins and upper caste groups as well as Dalits and Muslims in the State. It was all to no avail and the Congress scion was humiliated.