The deadlock over convening the Rajasthan assembly ended Wednesday with Governor Kalraj Mishra agreeing to call a session from August 14. The Raj Bhawan announcement came a couple of hours after the Ashok Gehlot cabinet sent a fourth proposal to the governor for summoning the assembly. While the Congress has not mentioned a floor test as part of the assembly agenda, it is widely expected to be held on the very first day; no other Constitutional entity can overrule if the speaker decides so.
Announcing the session, Governor Mishra highlighted three points: a 21-day notice, live broadcast of the proceedings if there is a trust vote, and social distancing.
The impasse between the Gehlot government and the governor has been on since last week, when Congress MLAs staged a five-hour sit-in at the Raj Bhawan demanding the session. Amid nationwide protests by Congress workers over the issue, Governor Mishra had earlier said he had no intention of not calling a session. The governor had earlier said a 21-day notice is necessary for the same, and expressed concern about the coronavirus situation.
Rajasthan plunged into a political crisis earlier this month after a dissident Sachin Pilot was removed from the posts of deputy chief minister and the state Congress president, amid a tussle for power with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. Pilot had gone incommunicado, along with 18 other MLAs.
What the floor test means for Gehlot, Pilot and the BJP
The Congress in Rajasthan currently has 107 MLAs in the 200-member assembly, including six BSP legislators that crossed over into the party fold last year. However, that merger is currently being challenged in court. Subtract the six BSP MLAs and the Congress in Rajasthan has a strength 101, including the 19 rebel Congress MLAs. There are 13 independents (at least 10 of whom are pro-Gehlot and associated members of the Congress), and five legislators from the Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP), the CPI(M) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).
Right now, Gehlot is in a position of strength. CPI(M) and BTP have openly announced they would support Gehlot in the assembly. Unless enough Congress legislators or independents cross-vote, the Congress government looks secure in the state. For Gehlot, the biggest challenge was keeping his flock of legislators together, and not let further defections happen under his nose. Given enough time, the rebel Congress MLAs could have attempted to engineer further defections within the party. Now, with a date set for the assembly session, Gehlot can go in confident in the knowledge that neither the governor nor the long arms of the judiciary can touch him inside the house. Once he succeeds in the floor test, he gets an immunity of six months.
For Pilot, buying time was of the biggest essence. His every gambit—be it going completely incommunicado in Manesar, challenging the Congress disqualification notice in Rajasthan High Court, or trying to bring the BJP into play by impleading the Centre in his petitions—veered in that direction. If he could prolong the disqualification procedures (so that the 19 rebels get to vote against the Congress in the house) and bring more legislators and independents to his camp, there was a good chance that he could have dislodged the Gehlot government.
Now, he finds himself in an unenviable Catch-22 situation. Pilot has not yet resigned from the Congress; but, if he abstains from the trust vote in the assembly session or votes against the Congress, he will be disqualified as a legislator. He has also repeatedly claimed that he does not want to join the BJP. If, in the eleventh hour, he jumps ship to the saffron party, that could mean political suicide. All eyes are on Sachin Pilot to see what his next course of action will be.
For the BJP, this was a golden opportunity to topple the Congress in Rajasthan. While claiming they have no role in Congress's internal politics, the saffron party has definitely played its part, moving the high court to invalidate a Congress merger with six BSP MLAs and stating that the Gehlot government is in a minority. The Congress also claimed that Pilot's decision to hole up in BJP-ruled Haryana, under the protection of their police, and bring in Harish Salve and Mukul Rohatgi as legal counsel, smacked of the saffron party's fingerprints. For now, the party will prefer to wait and watch until all the moving pieces finally come to rest.
