Hours after Priyanka Gandhi was appointed the Congress General Secretary for Uttar Pradesh East, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, 23 January said that most parties in the country were run by families. However, for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party was a family.
“Decisions in our party are not taken depending on what one person or one family wants. As they say, in most cases in this country, the family is the party while in the BJP, the party is family,” he said, while interacting with booth workers from Maharashtra.
PM Modi’s comments are being seen as a jibe on Priyanka Gandhi’s entry into active politics.
Priyanka Gandhi’s appointment as the general secretary for Uttar Pradesh East is being seen as a masterstroke reflecting the party's intent to go the whole hog in the politically crucial state.
The appointment also marked Priyanka's official entry into politics, and is expected to boost the morale of party workers in the state which sends 80 MPs to Lok Sabha.
There has been demands within the Congress for a prominent role for 47-year-old Priyanka, Rahul's sister, to revive the Congress in Uttar Pradesh which was a Congress bastion till mid 1980s.
Priyanka, a mother of two and wife of Robert Vadra, has always confined her role in overseeing campaigning in Amethi and Raebareli, the constituencies of Rahul and mother Sonia Gandhi, respectively.
Several BJP leaders too slammed Priyanka’s appointment calling it “dynasty politics”.
"Expected, to promote dynasty is what Congress is all about. They consider family as the party while BJP considers party as the family. Congress has accepted that Rahul Gandhi ji has failed,” said BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra.
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wished Priyanka Gandhi luck on her new appointment and said that it was nothing unusual.
“Priyanka ji has become General Secretary, my good luck to her. Since party is a family concern, these kinds of postings are nothing unusual, except to say with a caveat, why has she been given limited role in Eastern UP? Perhaps, her persona merited a wider role for her,” he said.
After the SP and BSP kept the Congress out of their anti-BJP alliance for the Lok Sabha polls in the state, the party announced that it will contest all 80 seats in the state.
At present, Congress has only two Lok Sabha seats of Amethi and Raebareli from Uttar Pradesh.
Congress said, Priyanka will take over as AICC general secretary for UP East in the first week of February.
(With inputs from ANI and PTI.)
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