News about Priyanka Vadra campaigning nationally untrue, don't divert focus from MP stampede: Congress

NEW DELHI: The Congress has swiftly moved to reject talk that Priyanka Vadra would campaign for it nationally and not just in the family pocket-boroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli, a move interpreted as guarding her privacy while scotching any impression that the party’s main campaigner, her older brother Rahul Gandhi, needed her star power.

As some television channels flashed reports on Monday saying Vadra would campaign across the country, the party’s communications czar took to the airwaves to emphatically deny it and said it was part of a disinformation campaign spread by opponents to divert focus away from the stampede in a temple in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh.

“Over 100 people have died in the tragedy. The whole country is looking at the MP government, which could not even provide police arrangement at the place,” he said. “Priyanka is campaigning only in Amethi and Rae Bareli. I deny those reports absolutely,” added Ajay Maken, the Congress’ general secretary in charge of communications.

He said the news about Priyanka Vadra campaigning across the country was “an attempt by some people to divert attention from the issue and to hide the MP government's failure”.

The television reports had suggested that Priyanka was being brought to reinforce Rahul Gandhi to take on BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. “Congress condemns those people and news channels who are doing this,” Maken said, betraying the Congress leadership’s discomfort with reports trying to drag Vadra into the election scene. BJP rejected the charge that the news was floated to divert attention from temple stampede in MP.

The BJP, however, used the issue to target the Gandhi family and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. BJP vice-president Balbir Punj lauded his party's PM candidate Narendra Modi's growing popularity, and said that the latest political development reflects the nervousness and desperation of the Congress.