Political circles in Lutyen’s Delhi, the power corridors of India, are agog with a million-dollar question: Will the famous Priyanka Gandhi finally take a plunge into politics?

The Gandhi scion, daughter of Congress party’s president Sonia Gandhi and sister of the party Vice President Rahul Gandhi, has long been goaded by party cadres to take a definitive role in the Indian political landscape but has thus far resisted, rather stonewalled, such efforts.

Priyanka has done so because she doesn’t want to come in the way of her brother Rahul as he has invested hugely in the Indian politics and has been the Congress party’s prime minister-in-waiting at least from 2009 onward. She has thus far steadfastly kept herself away from the hurly-burly of politics and has confined herself to campaigning for her mother and brother.

However, this may change big time during assembly elections for India’s most populous and most volatile state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), which are due in 2017. The Congress has been out of office in this politically swing state since 1989 or almost 27 years. The last Congress chief minister of the state was N.D. Tiwari who bowed out of office in December 1989. This was the year when coalition politics era started in Indian politics and has taken roots since then.

The Congress has rapidly declined since then in the state and has ceded political space to regional parties like the Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Bahujan Samaj Party of Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged as a potent political force in UP. Invariably for decades the Congress has been relegated to the number four position in the state’s political calculus.

But this situation may well change for the better for the Congress and the party may well bounce back into the state’s affairs if Priyanka were to wade into its politics. There have been reports in the Indian media that the Congress party wants to draft in Prashant Kishor, the wonder man of Indian electoral politics who successfully choreographed Narendra Modi’s prime ministerial campaign in April-May 2014.

The buzz in the Indian political circles is that the Congress party is keen on roping in the polls mandarin Prashant Kishor for its UP expedition and Kishor has expressed his willingness if the grand old party were to declare Priyanka as its chief ministerial candidate.

Kishor’s charisma is a well-known thing. He had conceptualised and choreographed Modi’s prime ministerial campaign in April-May 2014 general elections and had produced magical results. The Indian political grapevine has it that he was stonewalled by BJP president Amit Shah in getting too close to Modi. As a result, he switched sides and decided to teach Shah a lesson. He rubbed it in a few months earlier when he designed the poll campaign for Nitish Kumar, a staunch critic of Modi, and ensured Kumar’s victory and scripted BJP’s humiliation in Bihar polls

Now cut to 2016. The Congress has gone by the dictum that enemy’s enemy is a friend. That’s why it is keen on roping in Kishor for its UP campaign. Going by Kishor’s past track record, it would go to any extent in defeating Modi politically. UP presents the most ideal platform.

If Kishor demands that Priyanka be declared as the Congress party’s chief ministerial candidate for UP polls, it will be extremely hard for the Congress to ignore this demand. Priyanka wading into the hurly-burly of Indian politics will be a game changer. She is not just a surname politician. She may be much more. If she were to enter the political fray in UP next year, it would inevitably recast political equations.

She is seen by many as the most worthy successor of the Indira Gandhi legacy, the stalwart Congress politician with whom she shares a remarkable visual similarity. Priyanka also has the advantage of having a clean slate as she has never contested an election and has always steered clear of politics.

If this were to happen, it would definitely be a shot in the arm of the Congress. Moreover, she won’t be coming in the way of her brother Rahul, as she would only be seen to dabbling in state-level politics, not national politics. It will be interesting to see how things pan out in coming months.