New Delhi [India], Mar.4 (ANI): Congress star campaigner Priyanka Gandh on Saturday i gave a miss to a joint road show of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, in Varanasi, sparking off rumours that the move may be long-term strategy of the Congress.
According to Congress insiders, Priyanka's has been kept as a 'trump card' for general in 2019.
Earlier, Priyanka was set to campaign across Uttar Pradesh as her name figured in the list of 40 star campaigners released by the Congress. Party workers were quite enthusiastic about Priyanka's participation but the party decided to keep her behind the scenes.
She is believed to be monitoring the election campaign and determining the venues of road shows and analysing the response thereafter.
According to Congress sources, she was expected to appear in a Amethi rally along with Rahul Gandhi, but when she heard that Samajwadi Party Cabinet Minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati was planning to campaign in the district, she opted out.
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Prajapati is pitted against Ameeta Singh of the Congress Party and Garima Singh of the the Bharatiya Janata Party (B JP) and is involved in a alleged case of gangrape and attempt to rape a woman and her minor daughter. His appearance in Amethi would have upset Priyanka.
Priyanka joining active politics or not has kept India guessing for more than a decade, but her journey in the Congress Party is well documented. Be it about negotiating the pre-poll alliance with Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, persuading Navjot Singh Sidhu to join the Congress as a star campaigner or her role as a leader who stands by her elder brother in his political journey.
But as of now, with the elections about enter the last phase, Priyanka Gandhi would be unaffected as whosoever wins the credit or blame would go to Rahul Gandhi.