Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Thursday took oath as the Lok Sabha member from Kerala’s Wayanad, the seat she won with 6.22 lakh votes in the recently held bypoll. This marks her official debut in electoral politics.
Donned in Kerala Kasavu saree, a typical Malayali festivities attire that is off-white in colour and has golden border, Vadra held a copy of the Constitution of India when she took the oath of office administered by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, with other lawmakers present in the House.
Later, Congress shared a post on X, where Priyanka, Rahul and Sonia Gandhi were captured in the same frame, posing together and the caption read, “In service of the country.”
With Vadra’s entry in the Lok Sabha, India’s Parliament now has three members of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Her brother Rahul Gandhi is in the Lok Sabha, a parliamentarian from Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi constituency. Their mother Sonia Gandhi is a Rajya Sabha member after she vacated the Raebareli constituency last year.
However, this is not the first time that the Nehru-Gandhi family has formed such a combination in Parliament. Back in 2014, four members of the Nehru-Gandhi family were elected Members of Parliament. Sonia Gandhi represented Rae Bareli seat, Rahul Gandhi Amethi, Maneka Gandhi Piliphit and Varun Gandhi Sultanpur — all Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh.
While Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are top leaders of the Congress, the principal Opposition party in Parliament, Maneka Gandhi and Varun Gandhi are members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Nehru-Gandhi family has a long history of electoral representation in India’s Parliament, with Jawaharlal Nehru becoming the first prime minister of the country after Independence. He contested elections from Phulpur constituency in Uttar Pradesh. His daughter Indira Gandhi — married to Feroze Gandhi, a parliamentarian during 1952-60 — contested from different constituencies including Rae Bareli. She also became the prime minister of India — the only woman till date to occupy the post.
Indira Gandhi’s sons Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi were both parliamentarians. Sanjay Gandhi was the first to enter the political fray and wielded enormous influence during the mid-1970s, when he is said to have played the decisive role in getting Indira Gandhi impose national emergency in India — the decision subsequently saw massive violation of fundamental rights of the citizens.
Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash in 1980, leading to the political debut of his elder brother Rajiv Gandhi first and later his wife Maneka Gandhi, who drifted away from the Congress.
Years after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, Sonia Gandhi contested Lok Sabha election and led the Congress party from towards the end of the 1990s to mid-2010s before handing over the reins to her son Rahul Gandhi, who made electoral debut in 2004.
Varun Gandhi, the son of Maneka and Sanjay Gandhi, contested his first parliamentary election in 2009 from Pilibhit Lok Sabha. He was denied a ticket by the BJP in this year’s Lok Sabha election.
Now, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has entered the Lok Sabha, defeating Sathyan Mokeri of the Communist Party of India (CPI) by a margin of 4,10,931 votes to win the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, previously held by Rahul Gandhi.
Wayanad has been a stronghold of the Congress. Rahul Gandhi won this seat in 2019, when he lost the family pocket borough to the BJP’s Smriti Irani. He won back the seat in 2024, defeating Irani.
The election in Wayanad featured a three-way contest between the Congress’s Vadra, CPI’s Sathyan Mokeri and BJP’s Navya Haridas.
Vadra entered active politics in 2019, having managed Amethi and Raebareli constituencies for her brother and mother respectively for over a decade. She was made the Congress general secretary in 2019 as co-incharge of Uttar Pradesh.
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Priyanka Gandhi Vadra takes oath, not a first when 3 Nehru-Gandhis are in India’s Parliament
