RAE BAREILLY, India, (Reuters) – India’s Priyanka Gandhi joined the election campaign in the country’s most politically important state yesterday, injecting sparkle into a tightly fought race and overshadowing her brother Rahul, heir-apparent of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
Vivacious and bearing a striking resemblance to her grandmother and former prime minister Indira Gandhi – who was known as “India’s iron lady” – 40-year-old Priyanka has until now stayed mostly in the wings of the political fray.
Her mother, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, heads the ruling Congress party. Her elder brother, Rahul, is being groomed to take over and has laid a heavy stake on the party’s performance in Uttar Pradesh state’s February-March staggered vote, a crucial milestone to general elections in two years.
Rahul’s campaigning in a poverty-stricken corner of Uttar Pradesh drew scant media attention on Tuesday as news networks focused on his sister, whom many see as the natural leader of a party that has long passed its dominance of Indian politics.
But Priyanka made it clear that she was campaigning in the populous state of 200 million people for her brother.
“If Rahul wants me to campaign, I’ll campaign,” she said with a broad smile at an impromptu roadside meeting with out-of-work factory workers in her mother’s parliamentary constituency, Rae Bareilly. “I’ll do whatever he requires me to do.”
Speeding along in a long convoy of vehicles that bounced from meeting to meeting, kicking up dust-clouds along potholed roads, Priyanka’s whirlwind election tour is for now limited to the family’s traditional stronghold in the state.