Priyanka Gandhi was closely involved, reportedly holding discussions with Akhilesh Yadav and his wife.
As a relieved Congress announced an alliance with the Samajwadi Party for the Uttar Pradesh election on Sunday, it cheered the role played by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Congress president Sonia Gandhi's daughter, in a first.
"Wrong to suggest lightweights were dealing on behalf of Congress party. Discussion was at highest level- b/w CM (UP),GS I/C & Priyanka Gandhi," tweeted senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel.
On Sunday evening Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Congress leader in charge of UP, thanked Priyanka, saying she had played an important role in the tricky negotiations with the Samajwadi Party.
Priyanka Gandhi worked closely with her brother and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for days to bring about the alliance, but even before party leaders could celebrate her finally taking on a larger role beyond the family turf of Raebareli and Amethi in UP, it all seemed to come undone.
On Saturday morning, after UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had unilaterally announced Samajwadi Party candidates for nine seats held by the Congress, the proposed alliance was in trouble. The Samajwadi Party alleged that Priyanka Gandhi's chosen mediators - strategist Prashant Kishore, ex-bureaucrat Dhiraj Shrivastava and state chief Raj Babbar, were just not handling discussions right.
"The CM has decided 99 seats for Congress which is many more than they can win; suddenly they are saying that they can't do with less than 138 seats,'' said a Samajwadi Party lawmaker on Saturday alleging that the Congress representatives were "rude and brash" and that even though Akhilesh Yadav was willing to talk to any messenger, he couldn't undermine his own partymen.
By Saturday evening, talks had all but collapsed and the Samajwadi Party's top leadership sent word to the Congress that the current strategy was not working. There were rumours that Akhilesh Yadav had stopped taking Priyanka Gandhi's calls. For the first time in the last six months, Sonia Gandhi was asked to intervene.
The Congress, realising the repercussions of this worked all night at two strategies. First, it tried to put the alliance back on track with some nudging from Mrs Gandhi. Second, they firmly denied any such intervention so that Priyanka Gandhi wasn't undermined in her first big political assignment.
Ahmed Patel, Sonia Gandhi's top aide and political secretary, tweeted that he had not called any SP leader, underplaying the role of Sonia Gandhi', on whose behalf he was said to have worked the phones. The second tweet that mentioned Priyanka, firmly credited her for putting the alliance back on track.
A Samajwadi Party leader who was part of the negotiations told NDTV that if the alliance has happened, it is because of Sonia Gandhi's intervention. Congress leaders stoutly maintain that that is a narrative built by "vested interests."
The Congress has settled for 105 seats, considerably scaled down its demand of 138 of UP's 403 seats. The Samajwadi Party and the Congress will contest five assembly seats each of the 10 in Raebareli and Amethi, the parliamentary constituencies of Sonia Gandhi and her son and deputy Rahul Gandhi, as part of the new deal, a major prestige point for the Congress.