Thursday, 28 November 2024
Thursday, 28 November 2024
A little after 11am on Thursday, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra took oath as a member of the Lok Sabha, joining her mother, Sonia Gandhi, and elder brother, Rahul Gandhi, in Parliament amid boos from the Treasury bench and the Opposition raising the roof of the House on the controversy around industrialist Gautam Adani.
“I, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, having been elected as a member of the Lok Sabha, I solemnly affirm that I will affirm true faith and loyalty to the Constitution of India, established by law,” Priyanka, taking the oath in Hindi while holding the little red book – a copy of the Indian Constitution.
“I will keep the sovereignty and integrity of India intact and faithfully discharge the duties of the post I am about to assume,” she said.
Clad in a typical Kerala white Kasavu saree with a golden zari border, Priyanka had arrived at Parliament accompanied by Rahul and her two children, Raihan and Miraya, ahead of the day’s session.
Before the formal swearing-in, she had a meeting with some of the 98 other Congress MPs in the Lok Sabha.
After being sworn-in as an MP, she walked down the steps and signed the register for the attending members, with a smile on her face.
Priyanka had won the bypolls to the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat – which was vacated by Rahul after he also won from Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli – by over four lakh votes, the victory margin higher than Rahul’s.
Priyanka, in whom her party’s rank and file see a strong resemblance with her late grandmother and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, has been a favourite with the Congress core supporters whenever she worked behind the scenes while campaigning for her mother and elder sibling, or taking the plunge finally as a Congress general secretary in 2019 and campaigning actively across the country.
In the last two decades, she has stood in the wings of Indian politics, there but not quite, while the Congress workers continued to pitch for her to play a more active role ahead of every election.
In 2004, when the Congress had pulled off a stunning upset against the late Atal Behari Vajpayee-led BJP’s India Shining campaign, the Congress party leaders desperately wanted Priyanka in active politics. Sonia Gandhi gave them Rahul instead, from the Gandhi family seat of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.
Since then, every time the Congress has faced a poll debacle, louder have grown the calls for Priyanka’s entry into active politics.
“A pleasure to witness first-hand the swearing-in of INC’s newest MP from Kerala, Priyanka Gandhi. Wishing her great success in representing the people of Wayanad, Kerala and India,” wrote fellow Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor.
Priyanka’s entry in Parliament comes at a difficult time for her party. The Congress has seen state polls in Haryana and Maharashtra slipping out of its hands after doing spectacularly well in this summer’s Lok Sabha polls.
While Priyanka has arrived in the Parliament, whether she has arrived in Indian politics is for time to tell. For now one would have to wait to hear her speak on the floor of the Lok Sabha, which was adjourned for the day once again because the Opposition wanted to discuss the violence in Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh, and l'affaire Adani.
