Why Ashok Gehlot loyalists revolted in Rajasthan
India TodayOn September 25, 92 MLAs of the Congress in Rajasthan submitted their resignations to assembly speaker C.P. The MLAs also boycotted the meeting of the Congress Legislative Party where a one-line resolution was to be passed to give powers to interim president Sonia Gandhi to find a chief ministerial successor to Gehlot, along with the latter’s resignation letter as CM. But the ‘extraordinary hurry’ with which the meeting and the proposed resolution were brought in made almost everyone suspect that the exercise was aimed at declaring Sachin Pilot as the new Rajasthan chief minister the very next day, when Gehlot was tentatively scheduled to file his nomination papers for the presidential election in Delhi. It is up to the high command now to decide whether attempts are to be made to strike peace with Gehlot by letting him be president and have a chief ministerial successor of his choice, or drop Gehlot from the presidential race, or force him to quit as chief minister if he wanted to contest, or pick a different president who would then cut Gehlot to size by taking control of the party organisation in Rajasthan as well as the distribution of tickets for the assembly polls in 2023. Also, could Gehlot be sacked as chief minister like Pilot was stripped of the Rajasthan deputy chief minister’s post in 2020?