A reluctant, 78-year-old Sheila Dikshit is the chief ministerial candidate for Congress in the upcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. We say ‘reluctant’ because till the last minute, before her candidature was announced formally at All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters, we’re told she was desperately trying to find a way out of this nomination. Being a seasoned politician, Dikshit knows she’ll be leading a losing battle in UP, but it seems Congress party’s election strategist Prashant Kishor reigns supreme in the party. He wanted a Brahmin face as a chief minister candidate for UP and despite all resistance from the veteran leader, he’s got his way.

Newslaundry learnt that in the last two months, Dikshit met Congress president Sonia Gandhi twice. On both occasions, she pleaded that age was not by her side and that there was too little time for Dikshit to win the confidence of party leaders and cadre in the state. That she would be guided in her electoral journey by outsider Kishor didn’t help her confidence.

At the moment, however, Kishor enjoys Congress  vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s confidence and is looking for a seasoned Brahmin political leader to pitch as chief ministerial candidate. In his first official meeting with AICC office bearers in March this year, Kishor made it amply clear that if Congress wants to regain its lost ground in UP, it has to win back the confidence of Brahmin voters in the state.  A Congress source claimed Kishor had said the following: “We need only 30 per cent vote to win UP, and that we can get from Brahmins (13 per cent) and Muslims (about 18 per cent), both of whom look favorable.”

Kishor is banking on Congress’s traditional vote base of Brahmin, Muslim and Dalits in UP even though it’s been a long time since those constituencies voted in favour of the party. With regional parties like Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chipping away at the Muslim and Dalit votes from Congress’s block and Brahmin votes being split between BSP and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),  UP Congress has performed from bad to worse in UP elections since 1989 when it lost power.

Now, though, Kishor thinks that a mix of Brahmin, Muslim and Dalit along with key campaigners like Priyanka Vadra Gandhi could bring Congress a certain level of respectability. Another factor that tipped the scales in Dikshit’s favour is that she’s daughter-in-law of Uma Shankar Dikshit, a legendary Congress leader from UP. Dikshit’s own unwillingness was ultimately dismissed because Kishor dug in his heels.Party insiders said that he’d threatened to part ways with Congress if he wasn’t given his choice of candidate. The final decision rested with Rahul Gandhi, and he sided with Kishor.

Today, flanked by some nondescript leaders of UP congress, Dikshit met journalists at her residence in Delhi after the formal announcement of her candidature by Ghulam Nabi Azad at a press conference. Even though she spoke along expected lines about how she would do her best to fulfil the expectations that came with this new role, her body language spoke volumes about her disinclination. And who can blame her? Even with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, UP will be quite a challenge for Dikshit and judging from how unwilling both women are rumoured to have been to join the electoral fray, it seems the hashtag for Congress’s UP campaign is #ReluctantWarrior.