Twenty-six years after she appeared on a Congress party campaign stage in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, the town where her father, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra finally entered Parliament, winning the Wayanad constituency in Kerala with a thumping majority of over four lakh votes.

“Congressukku vote podungal [vote for Congress],” she had told the gathering in Tamil on January 11, 1998. “I remember it very clearly that she spoke one sentence in Tamil. The crowd went wild with joy,” recalls A. Gopanna, now Tamil Nadu Congress Committee vice president. “It was the first time that she had come here, and it was her first time on stage… Her words were drowned out by the rapturous welcome she received,” he told Frontline.

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It is not a story of “from then there was no looking back,” though Priyanka belonging to the Gandhi family meant that politics was always around her. She had, at that time, talked about the need to be around for her children and to take care of the family. But by 2004, when “India Shining” was the slogan of then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Congress was down in the dumps, it needed everyone to come out and lend a hand. The “will she, won’t she” ended then; and she too was roped in.

It is not easy to confront a person accused of killing one’s own parent or a sibling and seek closure over the incident. After the assassination of her father, a young Priyanka had struggled with the reality of the fact. But she had the rare courage to travel to the Vellore prison and meet Nalini, one of the key figures convicted in the assassination plot. Nalini later told The Hindu that March 18, 2008, was a special day in her life. Nalini maintained her innocence to the press in the 2021 interaction, but there was no third person when she met Priyanka in 2008. Priyanka later said she met Nalini out of her own initiative and described it as a “personal visit.” Neither her mother nor her brother have ever talked about the meeting. 

Initial years

Priyanka was first tested in 2004, when she was given the responsibility of being her mother, Sonia Gandhi’s, campaign manager in Rae Bareli. She kept a low-profile and remained behind the scenes, even during the years that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power from 2004 to 2014. Her formal entry into politics came much later, in 2019, after she was appointed a general secretary. In 2020, she was given charge of the biggest State in India, Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress had scarcely any presence in the past few decades. She gave up this role in 2023.

Politicians say that reaction to police action amid agitation proves a leader’s mettle. Priyanka’s chance came in 2021 when she travelled to Lakhimpur Kheri in western Uttar Pradesh, where a BJP leader and Union Minister’s son had mowed down protesting farmers, killing a few of them. The UP police arrested her and kept her in a guest house in Sitapur for about 50 hours. Videos of her inside the facility went viral, leading the politicised police to conclude that it was not in the State’s best interest to keep her in a room. She was released. A second arrest followed in Agra, where she went to meet the family of a person who died in custody.

She kept her presence up in Uttar Pradesh and took the lead in the 2022 election. The campaign ‘Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon’ [I am a woman and I will fight] centred women and tried to shift the narrative from caste as the prime factor in politics to gender politics. Congress also fielded a large number of women as candidates. The results were a disaster for the Congress, and it won 2 out of 403 seats. It neither managed to cut the BJP down to size nor make any serious expansion to its cadre base. She escaped scrutiny though. Luckily for her and the Congress, this changed in 2024, with the BJP losing much ground to the Samajwadi Party and the Congress in the Lok Sabha election.

Buoyed by the results of the 2024 election, the Congress high command decided that it was time for Priyanka to enter Parliament. Priyanka was fielded after her brother and Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, vacated one of two seats he contested and won in the 2024 general election. The announcement of her candidature was made on June 17, 2024. She was by her brother’s side as he visited Wayanad following the massive floods, deaths, and devastation in August 2024. At the end of the visit, it was clear that she had endeared herself to the people of the district by her natural sense of concern and the manner in which she conducted herself.

Campaign centred on compassion

Priyanka has made it clear in the campaign that the natural disaster is uppermost in her mind. “Despite the landslides that devastated Wayanad, the BJP government refuses to declare it a national disaster, denying essential relief to those in dire need,” she wrote on the social media platform X on November 14. “This isn’t just negligence; it is shocking injustice to those who have suffered unimaginable loss. The people of Wayanad deserve better,” she added.

When she came to file her nomination on October 23, she was accompanied by her entire immediate family—Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, husband Robert Vadra and son Raihan. KPCC leaders swarmed the campaign in Wayanad and ensured that every voter was reached. “I know that many of you came here out of love for my brother,” she told a gathering in Meenangadi, Sultan Bathery, on October 28. “If you place your trust in me, I promise I will not let you down,” she added.

She did have a few issues to worry about—the fact that Rahul Gandhi had failed to resolve the Bandipur reserve forest night travel ban issue (to and from Karnataka), as well as her brother “abandoning” Wayanad for Rae Bareli. The reconstruction of parts of Wayanad destroyed by the floods was also a topic to target Rahul Gandhi and the Congress, with the oft-repeated criticism that a local candidate would be present always in the area as against a “parachuted” candidate.

But the people did not listen to these arguments. Priyanka, 52, established an early lead even as counting of postal votes began, and was always a few thousand votes ahead after the conclusion of the first round. By 10.30 am, she had secured just over 70 per cent of the total votes cast in the constituency.

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Congress leaders in Kerala were confident of her victory and the only interest in Wayanad was about the margin. Rahul Gandhi had a victory margin of over 3.64 lakh votes. She surpassed him by a wide margin, even though the voting percentage was lower than the 2024 general election.

Priyanka thanked the voters on X. She said: “My dearest sisters and brothers of Wayanad, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the trust you have placed in me. I will make sure that over time, you truly feel this victory has been your victory and the person you chose to represent you understands your hopes and dreams and fights for you as one of your own. I look forward to being your voice in Parliament!”

The people of Wayanad will hold her to her word.