Challenger In Chief - Rahul Gandhi

The new Congress president led the party to its best showing in Gujarat in 32 years, taking the 2019 battle straight into the BJP camp

- Kaushik Deka

In many ways, 2017 will be marked as a watershed in Rahul Gandhi’s political career. The country witnessed his new avatar—relentless in public campaign, proactive on social media, and assertive in decision making. By the year-end, he also took over as Congress president, an inevitable elevation that he had been avoiding for years. But this dramatic change had started with a failed experiment. In the run-up to the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Rahul appointed Prashant Kishor as his party’s campaign strategist. Kishor had been the backroom strategist for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and for Nitish Kumar in the 2015 Bihar assembly elections. Many in the Congress ridiculed Rahul’s decision to seek Kishor’s services as a copycat approach. But Rahul did not pay heed and assured Kishor a free hand to run the campaign.