Even though Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is yet to give her nod to the date for launching the party campaign for 2019 parliamentary polls, Congress leaders and workers are busy preparing a blueprint for her grand entry into politics with a press conference in the state capital on February 4. There are also plans to send Priyanka to Prayagraj to take a holy dip at the Sangam during Kumbh the next day.
Priyanka is likely to address her first public rally at Ramabai Maidan in Lucknow, permission for which has been already sought by UP Congress leaders.
In all these programmes, Congress president Rahul Gandhi will accompany Priyanka and use the Lucknow rally to kick-start the party campaign for the parliamentary elections.
Both Rahul and Priyanka along with AICC general secretary in-charge of UP west, Jyotiraditya Scindia will address at least a dozen rallies together.
However, a final programme will be announced once Priyanka lands in India around Wednesday midnight.
Sources in the Congress maintained that pursuing ‘soft Hindutva’ on the lines of Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka is likely to begin her formal political career by taking a holy dip at the Sangam during Kumbh on February 5.
A day earlier, Priyanka will take charge as Congress general secretary and in-charge of UP east in the presence of Rahul Gandhi in Lucknow.
Earlier, the two had planned to visit Kumbh soon after the programme in Lucknow but as Shahi Snan falls on February 4, they postponed their Prayagraj visit for the next day.
This is perhaps the first time that the Gandhi siblings will take a dip at the Sangam, the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers.
Earlier in 2001, then Congress president Sonia Gandhi had attended Kumbh Mela and taken a holy dip.
Interestingly, Rahul Gandhi, whose public zeal for Hinduism began with the April 2015 visit to Kedarnath shrine in Uttarakhand, has planned his first rally in UP on February 10, the auspicious day of Basant Panchami. His sister would also start her innings from Lucknow on Mauni Amavasya.
Sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party maintained that to counter the plan of Congress scions, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath tried to take mileage by organising a Cabinet meeting at Kumbh on Tuesday.
During the 2017 Gujarat assembly polls in which the Congress gave a scare to the ruling BJP, Rahul had embarked on several temple visits and continued the trend during elections in Karnataka where he visited over 20 major temples and mutts.
The Congress also came out claiming Gandhi to be a ‘janeu dhari’ Brahmin, prompting criticism from the BJP. And while performing prayers in Rajasthan, Gandhi revealed his ‘gotra’ as ‘Dattatreya’ and later introduced himself as Kaul Brahmin of Dattatreya gotra.