 "Priyanka Gandhi: The indispensable")
She was all of 19 when she took on veteran Congressmen who had started clamouring for Sonia Gandhi to take charge of the party soon after Rajiv Gandhi's death in 1991. "We have had enough of politics," she lashed out at those trying to draw her mother into it.
But when Sonia did take the plunge in 1998 to become Congress president and contested her first election from Bellary in 1999, it was she, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who introduced her to voters there in Kannada. Her presence rattled even senior leaders in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Five years later, in March 2004, Priyanka introduced her elder brother, Rahul, to the voters of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh. When a reporter asked her if she had brought him to Amethi to teach him the ways of politics, she shot back, with a smile on her lips, "I can't teach my brother anything; he knows a lot more than I do. You, perhaps, don't know him."
Today, Priyanka, though ostensibly away from active politics, has shown all signs of being entrenched in it. As the comatose Congress hopes against hope to be back in the reckoning in Uttar Pradesh, it has, yet again, turned to the one bright star it sees on the distant horizon.
So, Sheila Dikshit, Congress's chief ministerial face for UP, minced no words when she said, "Let's hope she [Priyanka] comes in [to campaign]. The sooner she comes, the better." Priyanka, it is believed, was the one who convinced a reluctant Dikshit to contest from UP.
Raj Babbar, on his first visit to Lucknow after being named UP Congress chief, thanked only Priyanka for his appointment. "No one will be able to stop the Congress when Priyanka ji comes," he declared. At all strategy meetings, whether they are held at Rahul's 12, Tughlak Lane residence or UP in-charge Ghulam Nabi Azad's house on South Avenue Lane in New Delhi, Priyanka is a fixture.
The true impact of Priyanka's style of politics can be gauged through the people of Amethi and Raebareli, the parliamentary constituencies of her brother and mother. "Bhaiyyaji rajneeti mein hain, saalon se (bhaiyyaji is in politics, for years)," says Mohammad Shakeel Jais, a 62-year-old Congress supporter from Tiloi assembly constituency in Amethi whose father was an MLA.
Bhaiyyaji is how old-timers in Amethi and Raebareli address Priyanka. That's how they have addressed her since she first set foot in Amethi, with her cropped hair, back in 1981 at the age of 9 when her father, Rajiv, was contesting his first Lok Sabha election from there.
That they see her as their leader is evident. While talking to villagers in Amethi, she once pointed to a little girl and asked, "How come her hair is so short?" The girl's mother promptly replied, "Well, our leader's hair is also short."
She is known to have a photographic memory. Faces, names and the problems people bring to her, she remembers all. Akhilesh Pratap Singh, Congress MLA from UP's Rudrapur constituency, recalls her meeting with a group of workers from Amethi. "As the men walked into the room, she looked at one of them and remarked, 'Your moustache looks different'. Nothing escapes her."
Jais, who is suffering from cancer, says Priyanka did not forget to enquire about his treatment when he met her at her house in Delhi in April even though three years had lapsed since she had last seen him. He is, however, dismissive of Rahul Gandhi. In 2014, on one occasion, he says, Congress workers confronted Rahul and asked him to name five workers from the constituency. "He couldn't. Priyanka would have named a hundred."
She is also known to support and help even the most junior worker. An article in BBC Hindi recently recounted the incident of a party worker who fainted while campaigning for Rahul in 2009. When he regained consciousness, he was at Delhi's Batra Hospital. The treatment required surgery and cost Rs 11 lakh; Priyanka ensured it was paid for.
Election after election, she manages Rahul and Sonia's campaign and between polls, she micromanages the affairs of Raebareli. "The constituency is being completely run by her," says Kishori Lal Sharma, Sonia's representative in Raebareli. "She is the one who takes every decision, whether it is administrative or political, but keeps Madam (Sonia) in the loop."
Even the forthcoming protest against the delay in the opening of the promised out-patient department of All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Raebareli is being planned under her supervision.
Earlier this year, during a two-day visit to Raebareli, Sonia addressed the party workers as "Priyanka ki sena (Priyanka's army)", triggering speculation that her daughter would be her political heir here.
But her role in the party is not confined to Amethi and Raebareli. At 44, despite being the youngest of the trio, she forms the critical link between the older generation and the next.
Yet, despite the oft-repeated demand of "Priyanka lao, Congress bachao", those who know the family say the possibility that she will agree to lead the party is remote. Today, every time the Congress drops Priyanka's name, the BJP grabs the opportunity to call Rahul a failure. "She doesn't want politics to have a negative impact on the family," says an old family loyalist.
Comparisons with her brother abound. He's well meaning, but takes a black-and-white view of things, says a Congress leader. "But politics has many shades of grey, which she understands." He is also impulsive, both in words and actions, which doesn't help. "To revive the party and counter opponents like Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Arvind Kejriwal, who have turned politics into a 24X7 affair, you need a long-term Chanakya kind of strategy, which she realises."
In a country where nostalgia matters, Priyanka in her looks and mannerisms reminds people of her grandmother, Indira. It is not unusual to see her wearing Indira's saris or invoking her grandmother and father's sacrifices to the nation at election rallies.
Sudha Pai, who retired as professor from the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and is the author of Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Revolution: The BSP in Uttar Pradesh, however, says the younger generation is no longer much interested in the past of the Gandhi family and does not relate to it. "Besides, Priyanka does not have consistent leadership and has always seemed reluctant to contest," she says. "But if and when she does, she will completely overshadow Rahul."
The people of Amethi and Raebareli, who have seen the three generations closely, also say that she has elephantine patience - and tolerance.
In March 2008, when she went to Vellore Central Jail to meet Nalini Sriharan who is convicted in Rajiv's assassination case, Rahul chose not to go, says a senior leader in the party. She said she went to make peace with herself.
Priyanka once said that vipassana (meditation), which she turned to in 1999, cleared her mind of a lot of things.
Today, whether she is at her 35, Lodhi Estate house in Delhi or staying at the Bhuvemao or Munshiganj guest houses in Raebareli and Amethi, respectively, her day begins on the treadmill followed by yoga. When in Amethi and Raebareli, breakfast is usually cornflakes, bread or poha after which she has an open house with the people of the constituencies.
On other days, by 9 am she is out in the villages meeting people, stopping at a house to have water drawn from a well or at another to have a cup of tea. Lunch is invariably on the go and is always accompanied with mango or lemon pickle. And a brisk walk is a must before she turns in for the night.
During one particular campaign, she and her children, Raihan and Miraya, who now study at Doon School and Welham, respectively, stayed at a local's house for a month. One evening, she took off with the children in a rickshaw for a round of the town as the startled Special Protection Group rushed to follow.
An important part of her work in Raebareli and Amethi is the women's self-help groups being run under the Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana. Until the 2004 elections, about 6,000 women from different parts of UP were involved in employment initiatives through these groups. Under Priyanka's supervision, the number has crossed 300,000. While Priyanka was a trustee in the past, today her name does not feature in the list of trustees; Rahul's does.
In Delhi, she has a parallel, though a less visible, life. More than Priyanka, her flamboyant businessman husband, Robert Vadra, is seen, sometimes dancing at parties, walking the ramp for a fashion designer friend, sharing fitness tips or flaunting his abs. In comparison to him, she is almost a recluse. His land deals in Haryana and Rajasthan have caused embarrassment to the family, but every time she has been questioned about it, Priyanka has deflected the blame.
She is good at that and is high on rhetoric, much like many seasoned politicians. "If she does enter active politics, the Vadra baggage will be irrelevant to the narrative," says Sandeep Goyal, chairman of Mogae Media who is writing a PhD thesis on human brands. "The man in the village doesn't care about such elitist accusations."
If there is one complaint against her, it is that she is getting increasing surrounded by sycophants and honest party workers are losing direct access to her.
Unlike her brother, Priyanka understands the power of images - much like Indira. Once, while she was coming out of a poll booth, an eager photographer's camera grazed her forehead. As the SPG lunged for him, she stopped them and brushed the matter aside. Compare that to Rahul who filed a police complaint against a group of journalists who had picked up the notes he had made for a speech at Delhi's Constitution Club during lunch break.
Despite her modern looks, there is an Indianness about her, says a Congress leader - whether it is in saris or in her taste for subtle Indian patterns that she sometimes shops for in Delhi's Khan Market or Mehar Chand Market. As a child, she also learnt classical music and is said to have a sound grasp of it.
She would also regularly visit an orphanage run by the Missionaries of Charity in south Delhi and rushed to help when a fire broke out there once. "But she doesn't come here anymore," says a nun.
For the last several years, she has been building a cottage in Shimla, which she hopes her mother who loves reading and gardening would use some day. She and Sonia, with practical sneakers accompanying her churidaar suit, are sometimes spotted here supervising the construction. The two-storey, five-room cottage being built on 1.4 hectares of land bought in 2007 was nearly ready when Priyanka had it pulled down in 2011 because she felt it did not look like a hill structure. It is now expected to be ready by next summer.
Rahul's inability to inspire confidence in voters and workers, accompanied with Priyanka's reluctance to lead, is affecting the morale of the party, says a senior leader.
Everything has a shelf life, he adds. Priyanka, Congress's Brahmastra (the most powerful weapon of the gods), will fail if she stays a campaigner, he predicts. She did, in both the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly and 2014 Lok Sabha elections. "But the day she truly comes in," he adds, "the story will turn."
But when Sonia did take the plunge in 1998 to become Congress president and contested her first election from Bellary in 1999, it was she, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who introduced her to voters there in Kannada. Her presence rattled even senior leaders in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Five years later, in March 2004, Priyanka introduced her elder brother, Rahul, to the voters of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh. When a reporter asked her if she had brought him to Amethi to teach him the ways of politics, she shot back, with a smile on her lips, "I can't teach my brother anything; he knows a lot more than I do. You, perhaps, don't know him."
Today, Priyanka, though ostensibly away from active politics, has shown all signs of being entrenched in it. As the comatose Congress hopes against hope to be back in the reckoning in Uttar Pradesh, it has, yet again, turned to the one bright star it sees on the distant horizon.
So, Sheila Dikshit, Congress's chief ministerial face for UP, minced no words when she said, "Let's hope she [Priyanka] comes in [to campaign]. The sooner she comes, the better." Priyanka, it is believed, was the one who convinced a reluctant Dikshit to contest from UP.
Raj Babbar, on his first visit to Lucknow after being named UP Congress chief, thanked only Priyanka for his appointment. "No one will be able to stop the Congress when Priyanka ji comes," he declared. At all strategy meetings, whether they are held at Rahul's 12, Tughlak Lane residence or UP in-charge Ghulam Nabi Azad's house on South Avenue Lane in New Delhi, Priyanka is a fixture.
The true impact of Priyanka's style of politics can be gauged through the people of Amethi and Raebareli, the parliamentary constituencies of her brother and mother. "Bhaiyyaji rajneeti mein hain, saalon se (bhaiyyaji is in politics, for years)," says Mohammad Shakeel Jais, a 62-year-old Congress supporter from Tiloi assembly constituency in Amethi whose father was an MLA.
Bhaiyyaji is how old-timers in Amethi and Raebareli address Priyanka. That's how they have addressed her since she first set foot in Amethi, with her cropped hair, back in 1981 at the age of 9 when her father, Rajiv, was contesting his first Lok Sabha election from there.
That they see her as their leader is evident. While talking to villagers in Amethi, she once pointed to a little girl and asked, "How come her hair is so short?" The girl's mother promptly replied, "Well, our leader's hair is also short."
She is known to have a photographic memory. Faces, names and the problems people bring to her, she remembers all. Akhilesh Pratap Singh, Congress MLA from UP's Rudrapur constituency, recalls her meeting with a group of workers from Amethi. "As the men walked into the room, she looked at one of them and remarked, 'Your moustache looks different'. Nothing escapes her."
Jais, who is suffering from cancer, says Priyanka did not forget to enquire about his treatment when he met her at her house in Delhi in April even though three years had lapsed since she had last seen him. He is, however, dismissive of Rahul Gandhi. In 2014, on one occasion, he says, Congress workers confronted Rahul and asked him to name five workers from the constituency. "He couldn't. Priyanka would have named a hundred."
She is also known to support and help even the most junior worker. An article in BBC Hindi recently recounted the incident of a party worker who fainted while campaigning for Rahul in 2009. When he regained consciousness, he was at Delhi's Batra Hospital. The treatment required surgery and cost Rs 11 lakh; Priyanka ensured it was paid for.
Election after election, she manages Rahul and Sonia's campaign and between polls, she micromanages the affairs of Raebareli. "The constituency is being completely run by her," says Kishori Lal Sharma, Sonia's representative in Raebareli. "She is the one who takes every decision, whether it is administrative or political, but keeps Madam (Sonia) in the loop."
Even the forthcoming protest against the delay in the opening of the promised out-patient department of All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Raebareli is being planned under her supervision.
Earlier this year, during a two-day visit to Raebareli, Sonia addressed the party workers as "Priyanka ki sena (Priyanka's army)", triggering speculation that her daughter would be her political heir here.
But her role in the party is not confined to Amethi and Raebareli. At 44, despite being the youngest of the trio, she forms the critical link between the older generation and the next.
Yet, despite the oft-repeated demand of "Priyanka lao, Congress bachao", those who know the family say the possibility that she will agree to lead the party is remote. Today, every time the Congress drops Priyanka's name, the BJP grabs the opportunity to call Rahul a failure. "She doesn't want politics to have a negative impact on the family," says an old family loyalist.
Comparisons with her brother abound. He's well meaning, but takes a black-and-white view of things, says a Congress leader. "But politics has many shades of grey, which she understands." He is also impulsive, both in words and actions, which doesn't help. "To revive the party and counter opponents like Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Arvind Kejriwal, who have turned politics into a 24X7 affair, you need a long-term Chanakya kind of strategy, which she realises."
In a country where nostalgia matters, Priyanka in her looks and mannerisms reminds people of her grandmother, Indira. It is not unusual to see her wearing Indira's saris or invoking her grandmother and father's sacrifices to the nation at election rallies.
Sudha Pai, who retired as professor from the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and is the author of Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Revolution: The BSP in Uttar Pradesh, however, says the younger generation is no longer much interested in the past of the Gandhi family and does not relate to it. "Besides, Priyanka does not have consistent leadership and has always seemed reluctant to contest," she says. "But if and when she does, she will completely overshadow Rahul."
The people of Amethi and Raebareli, who have seen the three generations closely, also say that she has elephantine patience - and tolerance.
In March 2008, when she went to Vellore Central Jail to meet Nalini Sriharan who is convicted in Rajiv's assassination case, Rahul chose not to go, says a senior leader in the party. She said she went to make peace with herself.
Priyanka once said that vipassana (meditation), which she turned to in 1999, cleared her mind of a lot of things.
Today, whether she is at her 35, Lodhi Estate house in Delhi or staying at the Bhuvemao or Munshiganj guest houses in Raebareli and Amethi, respectively, her day begins on the treadmill followed by yoga. When in Amethi and Raebareli, breakfast is usually cornflakes, bread or poha after which she has an open house with the people of the constituencies.
On other days, by 9 am she is out in the villages meeting people, stopping at a house to have water drawn from a well or at another to have a cup of tea. Lunch is invariably on the go and is always accompanied with mango or lemon pickle. And a brisk walk is a must before she turns in for the night.
During one particular campaign, she and her children, Raihan and Miraya, who now study at Doon School and Welham, respectively, stayed at a local's house for a month. One evening, she took off with the children in a rickshaw for a round of the town as the startled Special Protection Group rushed to follow.
An important part of her work in Raebareli and Amethi is the women's self-help groups being run under the Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana. Until the 2004 elections, about 6,000 women from different parts of UP were involved in employment initiatives through these groups. Under Priyanka's supervision, the number has crossed 300,000. While Priyanka was a trustee in the past, today her name does not feature in the list of trustees; Rahul's does.
In Delhi, she has a parallel, though a less visible, life. More than Priyanka, her flamboyant businessman husband, Robert Vadra, is seen, sometimes dancing at parties, walking the ramp for a fashion designer friend, sharing fitness tips or flaunting his abs. In comparison to him, she is almost a recluse. His land deals in Haryana and Rajasthan have caused embarrassment to the family, but every time she has been questioned about it, Priyanka has deflected the blame.
She is good at that and is high on rhetoric, much like many seasoned politicians. "If she does enter active politics, the Vadra baggage will be irrelevant to the narrative," says Sandeep Goyal, chairman of Mogae Media who is writing a PhD thesis on human brands. "The man in the village doesn't care about such elitist accusations."
If there is one complaint against her, it is that she is getting increasing surrounded by sycophants and honest party workers are losing direct access to her.
Unlike her brother, Priyanka understands the power of images - much like Indira. Once, while she was coming out of a poll booth, an eager photographer's camera grazed her forehead. As the SPG lunged for him, she stopped them and brushed the matter aside. Compare that to Rahul who filed a police complaint against a group of journalists who had picked up the notes he had made for a speech at Delhi's Constitution Club during lunch break.
Despite her modern looks, there is an Indianness about her, says a Congress leader - whether it is in saris or in her taste for subtle Indian patterns that she sometimes shops for in Delhi's Khan Market or Mehar Chand Market. As a child, she also learnt classical music and is said to have a sound grasp of it.
She would also regularly visit an orphanage run by the Missionaries of Charity in south Delhi and rushed to help when a fire broke out there once. "But she doesn't come here anymore," says a nun.
For the last several years, she has been building a cottage in Shimla, which she hopes her mother who loves reading and gardening would use some day. She and Sonia, with practical sneakers accompanying her churidaar suit, are sometimes spotted here supervising the construction. The two-storey, five-room cottage being built on 1.4 hectares of land bought in 2007 was nearly ready when Priyanka had it pulled down in 2011 because she felt it did not look like a hill structure. It is now expected to be ready by next summer.
Rahul's inability to inspire confidence in voters and workers, accompanied with Priyanka's reluctance to lead, is affecting the morale of the party, says a senior leader.
Everything has a shelf life, he adds. Priyanka, Congress's Brahmastra (the most powerful weapon of the gods), will fail if she stays a campaigner, he predicts. She did, in both the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly and 2014 Lok Sabha elections. "But the day she truly comes in," he adds, "the story will turn."
Virendra Singh Rawat contributed to this report