LUCKNOW, INDIA (REUTERS) - Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the popular sister of the head of India's main opposition Congress party, made her political debut on Monday (Feb 11) with a roadshow drawing thousands in the most populous state months before a general election due by May.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi pulled a surprise last month by appointing his younger sister a party general secretary. She will also be its face in Uttar Pradesh, the state that sends the highest number of lawmakers to the lower house of Parliament and is currently dominated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
But a string of BJP defeats in state elections late last year and rising discontent over a weak farm economy and lacklustre jobs growth have weakened Modi's position, which an increasingly aggressive Congress is looking to capitalise on.
The 47-year-old Mrs Vadra - who is usually referred to by just her first name Priyanka - bears a striking resemblance to her grandmother, former prime minister Indira Gandhi, and is known for her gifts as a speaker able to connect with voters. Congress hopes that the eyeballs she is able to generate will turn into votes.
"It's like Indira Gandhi has come back," said Mr Fuzail Ahmed Khan, 45, a Congress supporter. "The state's farmers want Rahul Gandhi to be prime minister, Priyanka to be chief minister."
Mrs Indira Gandhi, India's only woman prime minister, known as the "Iron Lady", was criticised for suspending civil liberties for nearly two years starting in 1975.
Posters of Mrs Vadra lined the streets of the state capital, Lucknow, and hundreds of Congress supporters, accompanied by drummers, chanted her name after she emerged from the airport with her brother.
The siblings continuously waved at supporters from atop a bus and then later from an SUV during the drive from the airport to their state office.
At a stopover, Rahul Gandhi grabbed a microphone and said the appointments of Mrs Vadra and lawmaker Jyotiraditya Scindia as state party leaders were aimed at beyond the general election and bringing Congress into power in Uttar Pradesh.
"If there is a heart of the country, it is Uttar Pradesh," he said to loud cheers, Mrs Vadra standing by his side. "They're definitely focused on the parliamentary election but the aim also is to form a government in the state. We'll bring a government of youth, poor and peasants."
But it won't be easy for the brother-sister combination in Uttar Pradesh, a poor state of 220 million people where two regional caste-based parties now compete for power with the BJP and Congress is only a marginal player.
The BJP won 73 of the 80 seats in the state in the last general election. BJP President Amit Shah said last week the party would win 74 seats there this year.
Although Mrs Vadra has helped manage elections for her brother and her mother, former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, she has never held an official party post until now.
"I hope that we can together start a new kind of politics,"she said in an audio message shared by Congress. But she did not make a speech in Lucknow amid fears, political analysts say, she could overshadow her brother.
Since the announcement of Mrs Vadra's entry into politics, India's financial crime-fighting agency Enforcement Directorate has questioned her husband, Mr Robert Vadra, for several hours in a case relating to alleged ownership of £1.9 million (S$3.3 million) of undisclosed assets abroad. His lawyer and Congress have dismissed the charges as politically motivated.
Mrs Vadra, who drew more than 42,000 followers soon after joining Twitter on Monday, will spend three days in Lucknow meeting workers from more than 40 constituencies.
Described by Congress officials as a gifted orator and a strong manager, Mrs Vadra has been entrusted with resuscitating the party's organisation in the state, where it has endured a succession of crushing results.
From 21 seats in the 2009 general election in Uttar Pradesh, Congress' tally fell to just two in 2014.
