In an attempt to give a boost to the prospects of the party in the state and motivate the cadre which is already disheartened over the declining graph of the party in Uttar Pradesh having the maximum 80 Lok Sabha seats, Gandhi family scion Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has given her nod to contest the Lok Sabha poll from her mother Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli constituency, sources in the party confirmed on Monday.

Priyanka Vadra, the All India Congress general secretary and former in-charge of party affairs in UP, had given the slogan ‘Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon’ in the last UP assembly elections but had failed to get any positive response from the women voters. Sources said that now she had decided to jump into the fray in this election to save the family’s prestige at least by retaining her mother’s Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency, the Gandhi family’s lone citadel left in UP.

The defeat of Priyanka’s brother Rahul Gandhi in the last parliamentary election in Amethi by Smriti Irani of the Bharatiya Janata Party has put a big question mark whether the Gandhi family can save its lone bastion in UP, Rae Bareli, particularly after Sonia Gandhi has quit active politics a few months back and has entered Parliament by securing a seat in the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan.

Sources in the Congress confirmed that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was initially not keen to contest from Rae Bareli and had decided to campaign for the party across the country, but mounting pressure from the party cadre, especially from Rae Bareli, and seeing that the Congress workers were demoralised, she gave her consent to contest from Rae Bareli.

“We have been demanding from the day Sonia Gandhi made the announcement of quitting active politics that Priyanka should carry forward the legacy and serve the people here as her family has done so far since Independence,” claimed a former MLA from Rae Bareli while confirming that Priyanka would contest the Lok Sabha polls from her mother’s constituency and that an announcement in this regard is likely to be made during Ram Navami.

Another former legislator from Amethi claimed that not only Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Rahul Gandhi too showed his interest in contesting from Amethi parliamentary seat which he lost to Smriti Irani in 2019.

“Rahul Gandhi is presently busy campaigning for the party across India and is also busy in Wayanad from where he is contesting the Lok Sabha poll to retain the seat, but once it will go to polls on April 26, he will come to Amethi, which will go for polls in the fifth phase on May 20, and contest election from there also,” the former legislator said, adding that the people of Amethi and Rae Bareli were like the family members of the Gandhi family and both Rahul and Priyanka would continue to serve them.

It may be mentioned that in 2019, Congress president Sonia Gandhi won the only Lok Sabha seat in UP for the party when she retained the Rae Bareli parliamentary seat.

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who represented Amethi in the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2019, faced defeat in the 2019 election against BJP candidate Smriti Irani.

Sources said that witnessing the party’s graph touching the bottom in UP, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra initially could not muster courage to start her political innings from Rae Bareli. Similarly Rahul Gandhi was also confused over contesting both the Amethi and Wayanad seats or restricting himself to Wayanad to enter Parliament. The Gandhi scions, however,  changed their decision after feedback that not contesting from UP would not only finish the Congress in the biggest state of the country but would largely damage the party’s prospect in other Hindi speaking states, particularly Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, confirmed sources in the party.

Earlier, the Uttar Pradesh Congress had passed a resolution urging members of the Gandhi family to contest from Amethi and Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seats. UP Congress president Ajay Rai emphasised that the Congress Election Committee had unanimously supported this resolution, emphasising the significance of the Gandhi family’s presence in these constituencies in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.