GAME OF THRONES
Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot secures his party’s backing to cut challenger Sachin Pilot to size, but the threat to his government is far from over
The power struggle between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot touches a new low. Could the Congress have averted this crisis?
ON DECEMBER 14, 2018, a little past 2 pm, then Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his party’s two stalwarts in Rajasthan—Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot—came out of a huddle in a corner room of Gandhi’s residence at New Delhi’s 12, Tughlaq Lane. A decision had been taken that Gehlot would be the next chief minister of Rajasthan and Pilot his deputy. The Congress had just won 100 seats in the 200-member Rajasthan assembly and was set to form the government. Before leaving the room, Rahul told the two leaders: “There must be an equitable distribution of power. Gehlot-ji, you will take care of your young colleague.” The leaders exchanged smiles and posed for a photograph, which Rahul tweeted with the caption “United colours of Rajasthan”.
Exactly 19 months later, the Congress, now headed by Rahul’s mother Sonia Gandhi, sacked Pilot as president of the state party unit while Gehlot removed him from his cabinet, marking yet another watershed in a power struggle that began right after that tweet by Rahul. Gehlot and the Congress’s communication in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala levelled a serious charge against Pilot—that he had been hobnobbing with the BJP to topple the Congress government in Rajasthan. Pilot, who, along with his 18 loyalist MLAs, had declined to attend the July 13 Congress legislature party (CLP) meeting convened by Gehlot at his residence, claimed in an exclusive interview to india today that “equitable division of power never happened” and instead he was “humiliated and not allowed to fulfill the commitments made to the voters”. He did take pains, though, to emphasise—“I’m not joining the BJP.” But contrary to Pilot’s claim, multiple audio tapes of MLAs in his camp purportedly discussing the toppling of the Gehlot government have now gone viral on social media. In the tapes, tourism minister Vishvendra Singh (now sacked), MLA Bhanwar Lal Sharma and others can be heard discussing monetary transactions with BJP leaders, including, allegedly, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, the Union minister for Jal Shakti. Also on tape are claims that 30 MLAs will support Pilot. The Congress has sought Shekhawat’s arrest and an investigation is on into the money transactions.
Another indication of Pilot’s proximity to the BJP came
on July 16 when two of the party’s go-to lawyers—Mukul Rohatgi and Harish Salve—appeared for Pilot in the Rajasthan High Court and challenged the disqualification notice sent to him and his 18 acolytes by state assembly speaker C.P. Joshi. The BJP, for now, has been watching the developments from the sidelines. However, the July 13 income-tax raids against businesspersons close to Gehlot in Jaipur, Kota, Mumbai and Delhi have prompted the Congress to allege the involvement of the BJP-ruled Centre in the Rajasthan crisis. “The income-tax department, Enforcement Directorate and CBI are the BJP’s frontal departments, but such raids will not topple our government,” declared Surjewala.
BJP insiders say Pilot has been in touch with their party through two leaders who crossed over in the past one year—Jyotiraditya Scindia, his former colleague in the Congress; and Jay Panda, who was earlier with the Biju Janata Dal. There’s even the theory that the reason why Scindia loyalists got plum portfolios in the Madhya Pradesh cabinet expansion earlier this month was that the BJP leadership wanted to lure the Pilot camp in Rajasthan and potentially even MLAs supporting the Uddhav Thackeray-led coalition government of the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress in Maharashtra.
Congress leaders as well as sources in the BJP claim that the rooms at the Manesar resort, where Pilot’s 18 MLAs are staying, were booked at the behest of the BJP-ruled Haryana government. More than 30 rooms had been booked in anticipation of that many MLAs following Pilot. BJP president J.P. Nadda reportedly spent anxious moments on July 12 over how many MLAs Pilot would bring in tow, and when the numbers turned out to be much less than the expected figure of 30, the party developed cold feet—at least for the moment. Three BJP leaders—Rajya Sabha MPs from Rajasthan Om Mathur and Bhupender Yadav and Union minister Shekhawat—have been monitoring the entire exercise on behalf of Nadda.
Not surprisingly, Gehlot has gone hammer and tongs at Pilot, claiming he has evidence of his former deputy’s involvement in horse-trading with the BJP. “Gehlot waited, at least for six months, for some evidence against Pilot’s direct involvement. Once he got it from the state agencies, he gave it to the Congress high command—and that made Pilot realise his game was up,” claims a close aide of the chief minister.
Whether the game is over or has just begun, the allegations and counterallegations indicate a pattern that is perceived to have built up in the Congress in the past decade or so—the party high command’s failure to address disgruntlement or infighting and allowing crisis situations to degrade beyond repair. Whether it was the exit of Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh in 2010, of Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam in 2015, Jyotiraditya Scindia in MP this March, or the banner of revolt now raised by Pilot, a common thread runs through—the Gandhis, the first family of the Congress where power is concentrated, either turned a deaf ear to the problem at hand or did too little, too late. In the process, they lost crucial leaders, who either formed new political outfits or joined the BJP to eventually bring down Congress governments in their respective states. Political observers feel the Rajasthan crisis will most likely end with Pilot’s exit from the Congress. However, the bitter feud between Gehlot, 69, and Pilot, 42, is unique in its own ways; it started, ironically, with a politically correct move six years ago.
THE BEGINNING OF A CRISIS
In January 2014, a month after the Gehlot-led ruling Congress had been clobbered by the BJP in the assembly election—the party won just 21 seats out of 200—Pilot, then a Union minister, was appointed president of the state unit. His task was to revive the party in Rajasthan. It was a brave decision in Indian politics to entrust a young leader with such a big responsibility.
Pilot began on a disastrous note. In the Lok Sabha election held a couple of months later, the Congress—drowned