Priyanka Vadra after casting her vote on Saturday. (PTI)

New Delhi, Nov. 29: Sonia Gandhi and Rahul came, voted and left. But Priyanka delighted the Congress by stopping to speak out against the attack on Mumbai.

What would grandmother Indira Gandhi have done had she been alive when terrorists struck, she was asked. Priyanka’s answer: “She would have acted in a way that would have made all of us proud.”

Congress leaders who hang on to every word that a Gandhi utters went into a tizzy, trying to interpret the comment. Was Priyanka hinting at her entry in active politics somewhere closer to the general elections? Was she implying that the country would be better off with a Gandhi at the helm or was she simply highlighting the family’s legacy?

A large section of Congress leaders did not see the comment, made in response to a query, as criticism of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It was only a reminder of Indira’s resolve and track record of leading from the front in testing times, they said.

The attack on Mumbai was a threat to the nation, said Priyanka who has often been compared to her grandmother and who the Congress desperately wants to see in politics. “Whoever has done this to us should be made to pay for it,” she said outside a polling booth after casting her vote in the Delhi Assembly elections.

“The government, the nation as a whole, is reacting to this unitedly. I think that is the most important thing. We are all very strong as a nation and as a people and we will fight it all together... my heart goes out to the families of the victims.”

Mother Sonia had not said a word when she came to vote at Nirman Bhavan, part of chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s New Delhi constituency.

Brother Rahul had reached his polling booth — Nagar Palika secondary school in Rajesh Pilot Lane — early, at 8.30am. There were five persons already waiting to vote when the Congress MP arrived. He was offered the option of voting straightaway but chose to stand in queue. Asked about the attack on Mumbai, he refused comment saying he was running late.

Later, at an election rally in Rajasthan, Rahul did speak of the strike. The terrorists wanted to destroy the fabric of democracy, he said, and asked people to come together and reject communal and divisive forces.

Party leaders, not surprisingly, saw a design in the Gandhis’ voting behaviour. Sonia’s silence, they said, suggested the Congress president did not want to comment on an issue left to the Prime Minister to handle. Rahul waiting in the queue showed that the party general secretary was not in a hurry and that he was as keen to participate in democracy as the rest of the country.

The Congress leaders also saw the wait in the queue as a sign that Rahul was ready to play second fiddle to Prime Minister Singh.

Priyanka’s comment was aimed at the future, they said. It was gentle reminder to countrymen of the sacrifices the family has made and an answer to the BJP’s campaign that it alone is equipped to tackle terror.

Delhi turnout

Over 60 per cent of Delhi’s 1.5 crore electorate came out to vote today, in the highest turnout since 1993.

those who heard & saw

Rahul Nath, a businessman in Mumbai, whose sister Rohini Nath and her husband were trapped inside the Trident for more than 12 hours

My sister and brother-in-law had flown in from Singapore and checked into the Trident on Wednesday. They and their friend were eating dessert at Kandahar on the first floor when the terrorists barged in and started shooting around 9.45pm. The hostess of the restaurant was shot but told everyone to run. They all ran for the service exit and emerged near a staircase where there was a stampede. My sister, brother-in-law and their friend ran up but his wife was pushed downstairs. They did not know how many floors they ran up during which time they lost the friend in the crowd. They heard the terrorists following them shooting and people being hit. When they came to a floor that looked unoccupied they hid under a bed in a service room. At some point, Rohini sent a text asking me to take care of their children if anything happened to them. She said in the night they heard a terrorist shoot out the corridor lights. I stayed in touch through text messaging but they did not know where they were. The commandos said they needed the exact location if they were to be rescued. My brother-in-law looked around in the light of his mobile and found a bucket with the floor number on it. They were on the 19th floor. When the NSG first stormed in on Thursday, they were among the first seven to be rescued. The friend’s wife had survived but he had been shot.

Sharana Jhangiani, a journalism student whose house in Prem Bhavan shares the back wall with Nariman House, witnessed the action

I was standing in my balcony waiting for friends to pick me up because we were to go out for dinner. But a friend called to tell me about the Leopold shooting and told me not to get out. I was on the phone with my brother who had also gone out when some people inside Nariman House started firing randomly into my compound. Everyone in my building and Faridan Court, which also shares a wall with Nariman House, ran into Colaba Court, a building away from Nariman House. The parents of my friend, who lived on the ground floor of my building, had run up to the fourth floor of Colaba Court. They looked out from a window when a terrorist shot them. I have not seen my friend since. We went back into our house around 3am. Around 8.30pm, the commandos came to our house and said they wanted to attack from our terrace. They told us the operation would be loud and scary. They said if we had a place where we could go we should. They cut the electricity and led us out in a single file. I was the first to get out and had to spend 20 horrible minutes waiting for my family. We had to duck out one by one. An ambulance took us to my aunt’s place where we are staying now.

AS TOLD TO CHANDREYEE CHATTERJEE