At the Congress Working Committee meeting held shortly after the party’s humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha elections last year, Rahul Gandhi hit out at three senior leaders for putting their children before the party’s interests in the polls. While he did not name them, it was clear that one of them was Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, in whose state the party’s tally was an embarrassing zero and he had failed to ensure even his son Vaibhav’s victory from home turf Jodhpur.
In the aftermath of the Lok Sabha debacle, this was exactly the line adopted by the camp of Gehlot’s bete noire Sachin Pilot, a young leader belonging to the Rahul brigade which has been at odds with the party’s old guard. Leaders close to Pilot raised questions about Gehlot’s leadership and demanded a change of guard.
The Lok Sabha disaster was an opportunity for Pilot to hit back at Gehlot, who he believed had snatched the chief minister’s post from him. Pilot, who was state Congress president from 2013, had worked hard for the party’s victory in the assembly elections and was hoping to get the top post, but had to be content with that of the deputy.
The campaign against Gehlot, however, fizzled out as the same CWC meeting marked a major change in the power dynamics in the party. At the meeting on May 25, 2019, Rahul announced that he was stepping down as party president, and this led to Sonia Gandhi taking over as interim president a few months down the line. Thus began the process of the old guard, sidelined during Rahul’s tenure, making a comeback and consolidating its hold over the party.
The ripples of the changed dynamics were felt in Jaipur. Gehlot went on to systematically establish his position and simultaneously clip Pilot’s wings. “Not just for the Congress workers, even in the eyes of the public, Pilot was instrumental in taking the Congress from just 21 seats to being a party in power. But he was treated unfairly and pushed to the wall,” said Congress leader Rajendra Chaudhary.
Ministers from the Pilot camp often complained about the high-handedness of the bureaucracy, an apparent reference to officials dominating the affairs of the government at Gehlot’s instance. Pilot himself is learnt to have been aggrieved about Gehlot not allowing him to have officials of his own choice in the departments under his charge. The chief minister took major policy decisions without taking his deputy into confidence.
Gehlot also brought six BSP legislators into the party fold, which increased the Congress tally in the 200-member house to 106. And, the support of 12 independent MLAs, who were Congress rebels, provided him with the crucial buffer. The party had won 99 seats in the elections and one later in a byelection.
Pilot’s grouse was that Gehlot had cornered all the important portfolios, leaving him with the charge of PWD, rural development, Panchayati Raj and statistics. He was also upset that Gehlot was not willing to share the limelight. While 025 crore was spent on publicity and advertising for the chief minister, the expenditure for the deputy chief minister was zero.
The Pilot camp says Gehlot was also preparing the ground for removing him as state party president by pushing for the ‘one man-one post’ formula. The last straw was the notice sent to him by the Special Operations Group of the Rajasthan Police for recording his statement in connection with the allegations of the BJP trying to bribe MLAs supporting the government.
Pilot is said to have communicated to the Congress leadership that it had become a question of his dignity and self-respect, and that there should be an assurance from the high command that the party would go into the next elections under his leadership. The high command’s message for him was that time was on his side, and soon he could have the state to himself.
In the battle: Ashok Gehlot with Randeep Surjewala, K.C. Venugopal, Avinash Pandey and Ajay Maken during a meeting with party MLAs at his residence in Jaipur | PTI
The Gehlot side, however, claims that Pilot had been talking to the BJP for several months. The chief minister, they said, averted a mishap in the run-up to the Rajya Sabha elections by sealing the state borders and sequestering the MLAs of the ruling side. “We have evidence to prove that horse trading was being done in Jaipur. If we had not kept our MLAs in a hotel for ten days, the same thing that is happening in Manesar now would have happened then (at the time of Rajya Sabha polls in June),” said Gehlot, after the Congress sacked Pilot as deputy chief minister and state Congress president. Pilot, however, has denied talking to the BJP.
The developments come as a major blow to the Congress, especially at a time when Rahul appears to be on a comeback trail and is increasingly engaging with issues of importance. Also, demands have been raised by many leaders to clinch the leadership issue. Sonia completes one year as interim chief in August.
The restlessness within the party is exacerbated by the spectacle of a seemingly stable government tottering on the edge, and yet another young leader going public with his ire about being side-lined. It is being asked if the leadership vacuum is harming the party as it is not responding in time to internal issues. In the case of the Gehlot-Pilot clash, it is felt that the high command let the differences fester. It had set up a coordination committee in Rajasthan in January in a bid to reduce friction amongst the state leaders, but it met only once.
“These are all cliches, to say that no individual is larger than the party or that the party does not cease to exist with the exit of one person,” said Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam. “Every individual worker and leader contributes to building a party, and hence every such individual should be given importance.”
Pilot’s rebellion and the action against him, coming just months after Jyotiraditya Scindia defected to the BJP and pulled down the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh, brings into focus the gen-next leaders being sidelined in the power matrix of the party. “Many other young leaders are likely to follow suit,” said a young leader who quit as PCC chief a few months ago. “A fine balance had been put in place by Rahul between the young leaders and the veterans, which has been disrupted.”
There has been a steady stream of such leaders leaving the party, including Pradyot Deb Barman, who was party president in Tripura, and Ashok Tanwar, who was president in Haryana. Since Scindia’s exit, there has been intense speculation about the plans of the other young leaders who have been restive and have struck discordant notes at regular intervals. A widespread feeling is that Rahul was not responsive to their concerns, and the senior leaders were able to convince the high command that their demands were disproportionate to their achievements and that they could not cause much damage to the party.
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, however, said the young leaders needed to show patience. “I fail to understand why he was upset,” he said about Pilot. “He was deputy chief minister. He was president of the state Congress. If there were any issues, he could have spoken to the central leadership and a way out could have been found. The Congress gives opportunity to everyone. Opportunities were given to both Sachin Pilot and Jyotiraditya Scindia.” Singh was identified by Scindia as the villain of the piece when he quit the party.
By now it is an all too familiar story in the Congress—restive youth, the old guard unwilling to yield and a central leadership failing to bridge the gap.