Rajasthan Congress: How Long Will The Truce Last?
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-08-15 13:05:28
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
Once the Congress managed to convince Sachin Pilot and his loyalists to end their rebellion, it was a given that the Ashok Gehlot government would sail through the confidence motion in the Rajasthan assembly. The BJP, with just 72 members and little support from smaller parties and independents, was never expected to be a threat unless a sizeable number of Congress MLAs voted against the government.
The way the episode played out shows that both the BJP and Sachin Pilot miscalculated on a huge scale. Pilot thought that with 18 loyalists and complete support from the BJP, he would be able to snare another 12 or 13 MLAs (30 was the minimum needed to comfortably put it across the Congress) from the party and achieve his objective of toppling Gehlot. But despite the time afforded by the delaying tactics of the Rajasthan governor Kalraj Mishra, not even one MLA came over to the Pilot camp.
In politics, 12 or 13 is a huge figure, given the fact that the opposite party immediately goes into damage-control mode. It is here where the BJP miscalculated. It should have had no truck with Pilot if he was coming with anything less than 25 MLAs. Then, it would have had 25 plus 72 of its own for a total of 97. Getting four MLAs from smaller parties or independents to switch sides would have been a cakewalk if they knew that the numbers were with the Pilot-BJP combine.
The BJP, it seems, realized its mistake and lost interest midway. That is why it stopped pandering to Pilot and that is why he started negotiating with Priyanka Vadra around 20 days back (coinciding with the time when the governor agreed to hold the assembly session on August 14). Pilot, too, has tried to salvage some pride by giving up a lost cause but not joining the BJP as he had insisted all along that he was never going to join the party.
This botched attempt would perhaps be a lesson to parties not to try and topple elected governments in states. It has also reaffirmed that Ashok Gehlot is a wily, if somewhat crude (remember nakara, nikkamma), politician. One thing is sure though. Given Gehlot and Pilot's uneasy, even combative, relationship in the past, it is unlikely that the truce will survive for long.
