The trouble in Rajasthan Congress bodes ill for the party’s prospects in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as any hope of a truce between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot. The mess makes the top leadership look confused and helpless. And that is definitely not a good sign.
Just two days after Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, at a rally in Dholpur, accused the 20 rebels of taking money from the BJP to topple his government, Sachin Pilot hit back, saying the CM seemed to consider Vasudhara Raje Scindia his leader rather than Sonia Gandhi.
Not just this, Pilot also said he too could make allegations but prefers to not weaken his party. He made it clear that while he would not leave the Congress, he would not find it easy to keep quiet, especially with him being called names. All this was happening at a time when Rahul Gandhi was in Mount Abu at a Congress training camp called Sangram.
In a season of yatras, Pilot is set to undertake a ‘Jan Sangharsh Yatra’ from Jaipur to Ajmer to demand investigation into corruption allegations against Vasundhara Raje. While Rahul Gandhi’s yatra was a slogan to bring the country together and ensure the Congress put up a united show at the state level, Pilot’s yatra is likely to create more fissures in the party. The central leadership is left staring at a chaos in the poll-bound state given that it has been unable to tame the desert storm over the last two years.
Pilot belongs to the influential and politically important Gurjar community which is important not just in over 15 seats of Rajasthan but also in nearby Madhya Pradesh (also poll-bound) and Gujarat.
Given the dynamics, it may be difficult for the Congress to show the door to Pilot. In fact, when the party high command threatened to issue him a notice for holding a day-long ‘anshan’ in Jaipur, veteran Congress leader Kamal Nath advised the party to go slow, warning that Pilot’s exit would snowball into a big controversy.
Pilot has shrewdly capsuled his campaign under the slogan of fight against corruption. With anti-corruption being the electoral card for Rahul Gandhi till the 2024 Lok Sabha battle, Pilot’s crusade may be difficult to ignore.
While Pilot is a force to reckon with, Gehlot is no pushover either. It’s a known fact that Rajasthan sees a cyclical pattern of power sharing but both Congress and Gehlot hope that with some innovative schemes, the chief minister may make a comeback. Pilot is a thorn in Gehlot’s flesh and it’s difficult for the CM to work with him. In an ideal situation, Congress would want Pilot to shift to Delhi politics but the leader wants to keep and make Rajasthan his ‘karmabhoomi’.
With inputs from News18
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