Raj Babbar is UP Congress chief, no clarity yet on Priyanka Gandhi's role

The Congress party announced on Tuesday it had appointed former film actor Raj Babbar the president of its Uttar Pradesh unit.

State Assembly polls are due early next year. The party had nothing to say on what Priyanka Gandhi, daughter of party chief Sonia Gandhi, would do in the run-up to those elections.

Four new vice-presidents were also announced for UP. Babbar has no discernible caste affiliations. Which might mean party strategist Prashant Kishor’s reported recommendation that upper castes, especially Brahmins, must be brought back to the Congress by naming one of the latter its leader hasn't been entirely accepted.

“The Congress face (meaning its nominee for chief minister) for UP will be announced once the campaign begins. The campaign is yet to start,” said the party's general secretary in charge of the state, Ghulam Nabi Azad. He was answering questions at a press conference on a day Priyanka Gandhi had an hour-long meeting with him about UP.

Babbar was born in Tundla, near Agra, and entered politics in 1989, joining V P Singh’s Janata Dal. Later, he joined the Samajwadi Party and was with the SP till 2005. In 2006, he was expelled on the charge of anti-party activity. In 2009, he joined the Congress, defeating present Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s wife, Dimple, in a spectacular Lok Sabha election. He is a two-term MP and Agra is considered his area of influence.

Among the new vice-presidents (VPs) is Imran Masood, considered to have considerable standing among Muslims in western UP. In his meetings with workers and leaders from the Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur and Shamli districts of the region, Prashant Kishor was repeatedly pressed to project Masood, former MLA, as the party’s face in this area.

Masood had grabbed the headlines for allegedly threatening to “chop Narendra Modi to pieces” during the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign. Another VP is Raja Ram Pal, who won the 2009 Lok Sabha election from Akbarpur, once also a constituency of Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati. A Dalit, he was reportedly favoured as party president by Rahul Gandhi but has been named a VP.

The other two are Rajesh Mishra, a Brahmin from eastern UP who represented Narendra Modi’s present Lok Sabha seat, Varanasi, in that House from 2004 to 2009. He is considered to be a clean politician, without any attached controversies. Also, Bhagwati Prasad Chaudhary, elected to the Lok Sabha from Robertsgunj. He hails from Mirzapur, in eastern UP, is a dalit and at 60 is the only one who does not reflect the otherwise youngish profile of the new appointees.

The only certainty is that Priyanka Gandhi, younger sister of the party's national VP and heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi, also seen as the Congress’s only hope in UP, is almost definitely going to be campaigning outside the two family-held Lok Sabha seats of Amethi (Rahul) and Rae Bareli (Sonia). In the past, she has restricted herself to these two seats.

However, the contours of her role are still to be decided, with party indecision on how much they should expose her to the vagaries of UP elections. To play it safe, the opinion seems to be, while Priyanka should be the ‘face’ of the Congress, the party should have a fall-back on whom a possible electoral setback could be foisted. Which could be Raj Babbar.

A private survey by the party suggests that with Priyanka campaigning, the Congress could get at least 50 seats in the 403-strong legislative assembly; without her, the number might come down to 20. It currently has 28.

This is not the first set of meetings Priyanka is having with the party functionaries. Azad, also head of the party in the Rajya Sabha, had meetings with Sonia and Rahul in the past few days over the UP strategy. His view is that she should be actively campaign through the state.

Prashant Kishor, hired by the Congress to help it do well in UP, had reportedly suggested her name for leading the party in the state. Raj Babbar officially succeeds Nirmal Khatri, who had resigned after cross-voting in the recent polls to the Rajya Sabha.

Some believe the whole matter is likely to be suspended till September, when Rahul Gandhi could be elevated and Priyanka given another formal role. Another set believes it would be a waste to project her in UP, in an election the Congress is unlikely to dominate. They argue she should be saved for the next Lok Sabha election.