Will Priyanka take the plunge as next Lok Sabha candidate for Rae Bareli?

Party’s constitutional mandate
 
A meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s most important consultative body, the national executive, is scheduled to be held in New Delhi on August 18 and 19. It will be followed by a meeting of chief ministers of BJP-ruled states ten days later. The BJP constitution mandates that national executive meetings be held every three months. However, because of party president Amit Shah’s nationwide tour, this schedule was disrupted. No one in the party is likely to point out this constitutional transgression. So the meeting will be held after the Parliament session and both Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address it. The meeting of the chief ministers will likely be the last one before the next Lok Sabha elections. Could this guide of keywords — ‘lynching', ‘mandir’, jobs... — be of any help?

 
Will Priyanka take the plunge?
 

Is Priyanka Gandhi going to replace mother Sonia as the next Lok Sabha candidate from the Congress for Rae Bareli? This speculation has been on for years and Sonia’s stock reply has always been: ‘Priyanka has to decide’. This time the chatter is originating from the Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party units in the constituency who insist it will be Priyanka as Sonia has decided to take the Rajya Sabha route for health reasons. So far sources close to Priyanka have maintained that she is content to play a behind the scenes role but the chatter has grown so loud, it is now impossible to ignore. The ramifications are deep and wide: Another power centre from the family in the Congress, the politics of didi-bhaiya resurfacing, etc. The party in question is saying nothing.