Trouble Brews For Congress In Rajasthan
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-11-03 03:59:10
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
The fragile peace in Rajasthan Congress seems to be on the verge of being broken once again as Sachin Pilot has seized upon the fact that Prime Minister Modi and state chief minister and his bete noire Ashok Gehlot formed a mutual admiration society on the stage at an event in the state. While Gehlot said India's respect has been upped several notches since Modi took over and he is received very well wherever he goes, Modi said he had worked well in the past with Gehlot who is the senior-most chief minister in India.
Pilot said this mutual admiration banter between the two is quite similar to the one between Modi and Ghulam Nabi Azad and he said everyone knows how Azad left the party several months after Prime Minister Modi praised him in Parliament. Pilot hinted that the party should keep a watch on Gehlot. Gehlot responded by saying that Sachin Pilot should adhere to party discipline.
It is clear that Pilot is itching for a fight. He is nursing a grudge ever since Gehlot was made chief minister despite Pilot and his team giving their all for a Congress victory in the last elections. He even raised the banner of revolt with MLAs supporting him but a truce was brokered by Rahul Gandhi who reportedly told Pilot that his time will come. Pilot rightly thought that his time had come when the high command chose Gehlot as the official candidate to contest the presidential polls of the party. But Gehlot, who first wanted to be chief minister of Rajasthan and party president both and later backed out from contesting after the revolt by a section of MLAs loyal to him (who even snubbed the central observers sent by the high command in an act of gross indiscipline) who wanted to prevent Pilot from being made chief minister, despite getting into the bad books of the Gandhi family, managed to retain his post. Pilot was stumped once again.
Hence, Pilot is not going to let things pass. He is going to go after Gehlot even for the smallest of mistakes. But Pilot does not have the support of a majority of MLAs in the state. So he cannot take Gehlot head-on. What he is trying is to discredit Gehlot further in the eyes of the Gandhis in order to prove to them that they are continuing to bet on the wrong horse. But the Gandhis have little room to act in the state as the wily Gehlot has majority support among the MLAs. Rajasthan being one of the two states (the other being Chhattisgarh) where the Congress is still in power, the party would not like to upset the apple cart. It seems that Pilot's time has not come yet.
