General Election 2019: Priyanka Gandhi From Varanasi? “50:50 Chances,” Say Congress Sources

New Delhi:
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra may also make her electoral debut as the Congress candidate in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in what promises to be a blockbuster contest inside the countrywide election.
“The probabilities are 50-50,” Congress sources have instructed NDTV, revealing that discussions are on among its top leaders.
Sources say Priyanka Gandhi’s mom Sonia Gandhi, former Congress president, is among those who have reservations approximately sending her to struggle inside the first actual election after she joined politics. But the assets upload that Priyanka Gandhi has conveyed strongly that she isn’t always concerned approximately winning or losing.
It is not clear if the opposition gathbandhan of Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s BSP will lower back Priyanka Gandhi and withdraw their very own candidate. On Monday, the Samajwadi Party named Shalini Yadav, the daughter-in-regulation of a former Congress lawmaker, as the competition candidate from Varanasi.
Priyanka Gandhi and her brother Rahul Gandhi, the Congress president, have dropped pointers about a huge Varanasi conflict. Since Sunday, Priyanka Gandhi has said as a minimum two times that she would contest from Varanasi “if the party asks me”.
The forty seven-year-vintage joined politics in January and changed into quick appointed one of the standard secretaries in fee of the Congress campaign in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most politically crucial nation with eighty seats. Her release changed into aimed toward galvanizing the celebration in a kingdom that once gave the Congress many high ministers but has through the years moved directly to other huge players.
Priyanka Gandhi became given a fee of eastern UP, which incorporates Varanasi.
Her three-day boat marketing campaign closing month ended in Varanasi, which, to many, justified communicate that Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had something huge planned for the holy metropolis that voted PM Modi to parliament in 2014.
Priyanka Gandhi has stated nothing to lid the rumors. During an interaction with Congresspeople who wanted her to contest from Raebareli, her mother Sonia Gandhi’s constituency, she stated: “Why now not Varanasi.”
While campaigning in UP, Priyanka Gandhi has frequently spoken approximately what she calls PM Modi’s forget of Varanasi as he roamed the sector. “I become greatly surprised to pay attention from people in Varanasi that during five years, the PM did not get time to visit an unmarried village, go to even one circle of relatives in his constituency,” she has said in rally after rally, accusing PM Modi of going for walks a government indifferent to the terrible.
Last week, Rahul Gandhi, to a question on whether or not he deliberate to subject his sister in opposition to PM Modi, instructed The Hindu newspaper: “I will go away you in suspense. Suspense is not continually an awful factor.”
Fielding Priyanka Gandhi in Varanasi could be aimed at confining PM Modi, the BJP’s pinnacle campaigner, to one constituency.
Pitting Priyanka Gandhi against PM Modi could also be seen as a declaration of great intent from the Congress and sources said opinion is split on whether it might make an impact on the overall chances of the birthday celebration.
In 2014, the Congress had fielded Ajai Rai in opposition to PM Modi. He had completed 1/3 inside the contest, after PM Modi and Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal, who polled around 2 lakh votes – way in the back of the Prime Minister’s 5.8 lakh.