Karnataka Election: Priyanka Gandhi To Address ‘Na Nayaki’ Rally In ‘Maiden Political Visit’ To Bengaluru

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will address women leaders and party workers in Bengaluru at the ‘Na Nayaki’ rally today (16 January).

The rally is being held at Palace grounds and will see her launch the party’s campaign targeting inflation and women representation in the state. The party hailed it on its social media as the “date from where a new future unfolds for Karnataka”.

The campaign, led by Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) chief D K Shivakumar who, as quoted by The Hindu, said the party is hopeful that Vadra’s visit will ’help consolidate its vote-base and boost its chances to win upcoming elections’.

Before the event took off, the announcers were seen repeatedly instructing all the men to vacate the front rows and move to the left side of the dais.

The campaign song ‘Na Nayaki’ hailed praises on the women leaders of the party cashing in on the matriarch Indira Gandhi as the tallest woman leader, while Sonia Gandhi as the one 'who never hankered for power or position’.

But the focus clearly was Priyanka, who was hailed as the ‘pratiroopa of Indira Gandhi’, and a ‘rarety in politics’.

Fuelled by its victory in Himachal Pradesh, the Congress campaign in Karnataka, say observers, mirrors the one of the hill state, but so are the similarities if one has to find such. Like Himachal, Karnataka too has never returned any party for a second term, atleast in the last three decades.

The grand-old party intends to repeat the Himachal performance with a similar election campaign of using anti-incumbency, attacking price-hike and inflation and targetting the incumbent Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, like it did Jairam Thakur.

Both Thakur and Bommai have been called ‘accidental chief ministers’ by opposition leaders.

Interesting to note though, is that the Congress in Karnataka too, like in the hill state, is a fractured house and one marred by infighting which is said to cost the party its chances of a united fight.