Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has long been the great white hope of the Congress rank-and-file. In declaring her as prime minister material, Saharanpur MP Imran Masood was expressing the party workers’ belief that she alone can take on the BJP. That conviction has become sharper after the party’s electoral reverses in 2024 and 2025 and her sterling performance in the winter session of parliament. But the Congress may have missed the bus by waiting too long to bring her front and centre.

For the ruling NDA, she is certainly a more formidable prospect than her sibling and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi. Priyanka’s strength lies in her charisma, manifest courage, and unshakeable poise, and an almost uncanny resemblance to her grandmother, Indira Gandhi. The resemblance is not so much a matter of facial features, her admirers say, as the projection of grace, dignity, and strength in equal measure.

Her sibling has been a soft target for the BJP ever since he cocked a snook at PM Manmohan Singh in 2013 by publicly dubbing as “complete nonsense” his government’s ordinance on convicted lawmakers. This manifest lack of maturity delighted the BJP. “Pappu” became the centrepiece of BJP-sponsored social media campaigns. Gandhi hasn’t entirely shaken off the disrespectful sobriquet, despite successful public mobilisations around his “yatras”. Every time he fumbles, the jibe resurfaces.

Attacking Priyanka in a similar........

© Free Press Journal