WAS SACHIN PROMISED CM-SHIP?

Last week, while on Roundtable, a weekly political discussion show on Newsx, Sanjay Jha, who has recently been suspended from the Congress, made a startling revelation. He claimed that one of the reasons Sachin Pilot rebelled was that he had been promised by the Congress leadership that he would be made Rajasthan Chief Minister six months after Gehlot’s elevation. Hearing this, Rasheed Kidwai, author of 24 Akbar Road laughed knowingly, and later told me how Narasimha Rao, upon becoming Prime Minister and the Congress chief in 1991, had given similar assurances to both Sharad Pawar and Arjun Singh. And we all know what happened after that. Clearly, assurances in the Congress are given via intermediaries and seldom kept. A current case in point is T.S. Singhdeo, currently a senior minister under Bhupesh Baghel, for if Singhdeo’s supporters are to be believed, he was given the assurance of a rotating chief ministership between him and Baghel. That clearly is not happening. But one does wonder what will happen in August. Will Congress continue with Sonia Gandhi as interim chief, will it go back to Rahul Gandhi who had only last year insisted that the party choose a non Gandhi to lead it? As Jha says, “A non-gandhi Congress will arrest the fast dissipating brand of the Gandhis whose political capital is now under serious question. As for the Congress, it will be a new adjustment to a meritocratic culture as internal competition will rise. The party needs raw energy. Those who say the party will disintegrate without the Gandhis are alarmist status quoists who are reluctant to change.” But that’s easier said than done: for even after Rahul spoke about promoting a non Gandhi, the Congress went ahead and chose his mother.