Priyanka's Parliament entry: How will it help Congress, Rahul?

For the Congress party, grappling with a severe relapse of electoral atrophy after a momentary recovery during the Lok Sabha polls, the moment of Priyanka Gandhi taking oath as an MP, on Thursday (November 28), was a long-awaited one.

At a time when the Congress is still smarting under the humiliation of its successive poll routs in Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, and Maharashtra, the discernible wave of cheer in the party’s ranks over Priyanka’s Lok Sabha debut is quite understandable.

The Congress now has not one but two Gandhis in the Lower House of Parliament to lead the party’s charge against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government. Her entry into the Lok Sabha, where her brother Rahul Gandhi is the Leader of Opposition, also places all three members of the Congress’s first family in Parliament – Rahul and Priyanka in the Lower House and their mother, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, a member of the Rajya Sabha – indicating an ‘all hands on deck’ approach by the party even if it attracts predictable taunts about the party being a “dynastic family firm”.

Superior orator

Though none in the Congress would dare say this publicly, the younger Gandhi sibling, who takes over from her brother as the MP from Kerala’s Wayanad, is not just a superior orator but also a politician who can think on her feet and spring combative and quick rebuttals at the party’s rivals. Unlike Rahul, who lacks a grasp of realpolitik and stubbornly refuses to drop a political idea that appeals to none other than him, Priyanka, party insiders who have worked closely with her say, is “pragmatic, open to intra-party discussions and, like her mother, a good listener”.

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Yet, despite all the reasons that the Congress may have to celebrate the start of her parliamentary journey, any tall expectations that Priyanka’s presence in the Lok Sabha alone would also bring a reversal of fortunes for the perennially crisis-ridden party may be misplaced.

For starters, while Priyanka’s felicity with political jousting, her striking similarity with her grandmother and former Prime Minister, late Indira Gandhi and her charismatic persona may be formidable assets in public life, in Parliament, what would matter most is both the quality and quantity of her interventions.

For over a decade, Parliament’s functioning has been increasingly marked not by the quality of debate or transaction of legislative business but by disruptions, adjournments and even washouts of entire sessions. Priyanka’s presence in the Lok Sabha won’t change this disturbing new normal and, consequentially, there is little chance of her getting as much time on the floor of the House as she and her admirers would hope for to cross swords with the Narendra Modi government, leave alone humble it.

Priyanka needs to pick her battles carefully

More importantly, on the rare occasions when Lok Sabha may function, Rahul, as the party’s leader in the House, will have to decide how much of the spotlight he’d like to share with his sister during debates on crucial issues.

Also read: Priyanka joining forces with Rahul in Parliament will give BJP, NDA 'sleepless nights': Pilot

The Congress, its allies in the INDIA bloc would expect Rahul, in his capacity as LoP, to lead the charge against the Modi regime if and when important matters, be it the continuing ethnic violence in Manipur or the allegations against Gautam Adani or even issues such as price rise and unemployment, are taken up for discussion. Given Rahul’s largely unimpressive track record as an orator, even the Treasury Benches would prefer him and not his sister to do most of the talking. The brother-sister duo will also need to consider the implications – optics, the media’s spin, the BJP’s jibes and even murmurs within the ranks of the Congress and its INDIA allies – where both may be speaking on the same motion and one eclipses the other.

If Rahul has his task cut out while deciding how he wishes to use his party’s most sought-after speaker in the Lok Sabha, there will also be tough choices that Priyanka will need to make. A first-term MP but one already burdened by the collective and considerable weight of the Gandhi surname, her party’s expectations, public’s curiosity, media’s gaze and the BJP’s scorn, Priyanka will need to carefully pick the battles she wishes to fight in Parliament and the issues she wants to raise using other parliamentary instruments like Question Hour, calling attention motion, et al.

The Wayanad MP will also need to walk a tightrope that allows her to distinguish herself from her fellow MPs across party lines but not at the cost of her brother’s standing and doing so while ensuring that her decisions serve the Congress’s best interests.

Also read: Politics in India, Kerala not truly serving the people: Priyanka Gandhi

There were times, such as the winter session of 2022 or the monsoon session of 2020, when Rahul skipped entire sessions of Parliament. On the rare occasions when he attended Lok Sabha (almost never for an entire day’s sitting), his participation by way of the Question Hour, Zero Hour or debates remained sparse; allowing his rivals and critics to haul him up as an insincere politician merely basking under the privilege afforded to him by his illustrious lineage.

This is hardly a distinction that Priyanka would like to share with her brother. Yet, as a senior Congress leader who worked closely with Priyanka in Uttar Pradesh and during the 2022 Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls told The Federal, “The one thing that always holds Priyanka back is her unwavering commitment to her brother, which is a great thing, but the flip side to this is that she will never knowingly do anything to outshine Rahul, which may be a problem both for her personally and for the party as far as her role as an MP is concerned.”

Also read: Modi destroyed dignity of PM's post with hollow promises: Priyanka

The Congress leader added, “She prefers to be assigned specific roles by the party and will never ask for a job herself even during party’s internal discussions; for years she stuck to campaigning in just Rae Bareli and Amethi even though every important leader of the party urged her to campaign in other places and even in the recent Maharashtra and Jharkhand elections, she joined the campaign only after her election in Wayanad was over because she was told to focus on Wayanad... as an MP too, I think she will do only what Rahul tells her to, though she may put across her thoughts forcefully when speaking privately to Rahul.”

Will Congress give Priyanka 'a more defined role'?

While this sibling bonhomie and the deference Priyanka shows towards her elder brother may make for breezy newspaper and online articles or profiles about the duo, it does little to uplift the Congress politically, whether inside Parliament or outside it.

A party MP from a Hindi-speaking state told The Federal, “Everyone knows Priyanka is not just a better orator than Rahul but is also the more astute politician between the two... the party will benefit from her presence in the Lok Sabha only if she is among our main voices on the floor of the House because, unlike Rahul, who has a tendency to drift away into philosophical arguments during a debate, Priyanka knows the importance of making sharp, stinging and precise speeches but even more importantly she knows what kind of statements appeal to the masses and the media, what works in the Hindi belt, when to make an emotional appeal or to become aggressive.” The MP added, “If the party decides to restrict her participation by asking her to speak only on issues concerning southern states since she is an MP from Kerala or on issues of women instead of giving her a free hand, we will be wasting her.”

Many in the Congress also believe that Priyanka’s presence in the Lok Sabha should not restrict her to the duties of an MP even if Rahul decides to use her as the party’s preeminent anti-Modi crusader in Parliament. While speculation is that the Congress high command will continue to engage Priyanka as a star campaigner for elections and also a crisis manager for the party, a section of Congress leaders feel the leadership needs to “find a more defined role” for the Wayanad MP within the Congress organisation.