Cong ejects Pilot from power; CM Gehlot still in Raj cockpit

Gehlot hangs on with slim majority; Pilot removed as deputy CM, state chief

NEW DELHI/JAIPUR: Responding to Sachin Pilot’s rebellion against the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan, the Congress on Tuesday dismissed Pilot as deputy chief minister, sacked him as the state unit president of the party, removed two of his loyalists from the cabinet, accused his camp of “conspiring” with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to destabilise the government, and contended that its government has numbers.

Soon after the decision, Pilot — who has maintained a studied silence on the issue — tweeted in Hindi: “Truth can be harassed, but not defeated.” Later in the evening, he thanked people who expressed their support to him.

While Pilot — who has also served as a Congress member of Parliament and a Union minister, and was widely perceived as a rising star of the party with a national future — has not commented about his future plans, observers saw Tuesday’s developments as marking the end of his association with the Congress. Officially, he has neither been expelled nor has he formally quit the primary membership of the party. Coming in the wake of developments in Madhya Pradesh earlier this year, where Jyotiraditya Scindia left the

party, senior Congress figures expressed regret at the possible exit of another young leader.

Pilot, 42, is likely to set up his own regional party, according to a person familiar with his thinking. As the intra-Congress battle took a decisive turn, the BJP — which had, so far, claimed to be just “watching the developments” and blamed it on the Gandhi family — indicated that its doors were open for Pilot, and claimed that Gehlot’s government had lost its majority.

The Congress’s decision to sack Pilot came in the backdrop of its assessment that the arithmetic

in the Rajasthan assembly favours Gehlot — though party leaders acknowledge privately that there will now be questions over the “stability” of the government and the situation will remain fragile.

On Tuesday, 101 legislators — in an assembly of 200 — attended the Congress legislative party meeting at the Fairmont hotel on the outskirts of Jaipur, which included 10 independent legislators and two from Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP) and one from the Communist Party of India (Marxist); the other CPIM legislator was unwell. However, in the

afternoon, the two BTP legislators left the hotel, and went home, saying they would take a call on supporting a political party at an “appropriate” time.

Pilot’s camp claimed to have the support of 22 legislators, including three independents, also said that six other legislators would join it soon, and rejected Gehlot’s claims of being in a majority. Two of the legislators in the Pilot camp, Ramesh Meena and Vishwendra Singh, who were both sacked as ministers, issued a statement saying that they were with Pilot and Gehlot government was in minority.

The dramatic decision came on a day when the Congress held a second legislative party meeting in as many days — which Pilot and legislators loyal to him, once again, did not attend.

A Congress leader said senior party leaders reached out to Pilot again, and conveyed to him that if he did not want to attend the meeting, he should address the media in Delhi, clarify that he was a “loyal soldier” of the Congress. “But Pilot turned down this offer and insisted on his demand for immediate removal of Gehlot as the chief minister,” the leader said.