Sachin Pilot takes flight, Rajasthan Congress hits turbulence

A new season of the Congress party’s repetitive drama starring Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot has hit the Rajasthan political theatre. With no assurance forthcoming from the Congress leadership on his elevation as chief minister, Tonk MLA Sachin Pilot is on a five-day schedule of Kisan Sammelans across Rajasthan, predictably taking potshots at the Gehlot-led government while projecting himself as a leader who will stand by his people even if it means crossing swords with his own party colleagues.

The public meetings, which began from Parbatsar in Nagaur district on Monday (January 16), come at a time when the Congress appears no closer to resolving the turf war between its two most prominent leaders in the state than it was in August 2020 when the former deputy CM, alongwith 18 MLAs loyal to him, led a failed rebellion against Gehlot. However, Pilot’s decision to “be among people and workers in various districts of Rajasthan”, arguably, assumes greater political significance now than his failed coup did two years ago.

Eye on the polls

Rajasthan, a state known to vote out its incumbent government every five years, is scheduled for assembly polls at the end of this year. Pilot loyalists have been repeatedly cautioning the party high command that going into elections with Gehlot as the CM would be suicidal for the party given the CM’s past history of leading the Congress to debilitating defeats at the end of his previous two stints in office in 2003 and 2013.

The CM, on his part, had checkmated every move made by Pilot until his televised put-down of the Tonk MLA as a “gaddar” (traitor) got him a rap on the knuckles from the leadership two months back. Gehlot was asked to refrain from using such language for a “valued colleague”.

The central leadership had managed to broker a ceasefire of hostilities between the two arch-rivals last month when Rahul Gandhi’s ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra was passing through Rajasthan. Gehlot and Pilot both walked with Rahul throughout the yatra’s 18-day schedule in the state. While the duo refrained from making any grand gestures of a patch-up for the shutterbugs, they individually stressed that the “Congress is united” in the state and ready to face the electoral challenge that lies ahead.

But then, with the yatra exiting Rajasthan without giving any definitive indication of who would lead the party and its government in the coming weeks and months, the brinkmanship between Gehlot and Pilot is back full throttle. Curiously, Pilot announced his relay of public meetings in Nagaur, Hanumangarh, Jhunjhunu, Pali and Jaipur a day after he met Rahul at the BJY in Punjab.

Those close to Pilot say he had discussed his solo campaign with Rahul and got a go-ahead for it. “There is nothing wrong with a Congress leader who has been the party’s state unit chief, deputy CM and union minister working to strengthen the party in an election year. Gehlot and other party leaders should be doing the same. Rahul ji had publicly urged Congress leaders during the yatra in Alwar to spend more time among people. Pilot’s meetings are an extension of the BJY where issues of farmers and youth are being raised by Pilot. Even if Pilot is pointing out some shortcoming about our own government, it is for the benefit of the party so that we rectify our mistakes in time; there is no anti-party activity,” Rajasthan’s forest minister Hemaram Chaudhary, a close aide of Pilot, who was present at Monday’s public meeting in Parbatsar, told The Federal.

The thrust of Pilot’s utterances at his Kisan Sammelans is on attacking the BJP, at the Centre and in the state, and he steers clear of any comment that may be presented to the party high command by the Gehlot camp as being “anti-party” or rebellious. If anything, Pilot’s speeches are drafted to not only project his personal image as that of a sincere and empathetic leader but also that of a fiercely loyal soldier of the Congress. Pilot repeatedly lavishes praise on Rahul for the Kanyakumari to Srinagar padyatra and adds that he too has been participating in it frequently.

Subtle swipes

Yet, his subtle swipes at the Gehlot government, without ever taking the CM’s name, are hard to miss as are references that the Tonk MLA makes to his “hard work as the Rajasthan Congress chief” that brought the Congress back to power in the state in 2018.

In Parbatsar, Pilot made a fleeting remark about his “hope” that the state government would “go after the big fish and not petty touts” involved the nexus of leaking examination papers for various government recruitment tests. Though he held no punches in attacking the BJP for its anti-farmer policies and for not bringing a law guaranteeing MSP for farmers, it was Pilot’s comments on the paper-leak scam that immediately made headlines, embarrassing Gehlot, who was busy holding a Chintan Shivir in Jaipur with his cabinet ministers to take stock of various government schemes and initiatives.

At his second public meeting in Hanumangarh’s Pilibanga on Tuesday (January 17), Pilot raked up the paper leak issue again though Gehlot had, while speaking to the media earlier in the day, given his government a pat on the back for brisk action against perpetrators of the alleged recruitment scam.

In Pilibanga, Pilot also demanded that the Gehlot government give adequate compensation to Rajasthan’s mustard farmers who had suffered major losses recently due to unfavourable weather. He went on to say that the Congress and BJP have both enjoyed power in Rajasthan and his party presently has an absolute majority in the state assembly but “all political parties need to introspect” the extent to which their respective governments have actually helped farmers. The Gehlot camp would not be pleased with Pilot’s call for soul-searching considering the CM’s repeated assertions of running a pro-farmer government.

Wooing Jats

What has also created a buzz in Rajasthan and within the Congress is the itinerary of Pilot’s public outreach. On Pilot’s tour map are areas dominated by the Jat community, a traditional Congress vote bank that has in recent decades oscillated between the BJP and the Grand Old Party. Over the last 75 years, the Congress has had a galaxy of Jat leaders from the state – Harlal Singh, Nathuram Mirdha, Parasram Maderna, Chandrabhan and Sis Ram Ola, to name a few – but none that the party deemed fit to be made chief minister.

Several political observers have, in fact, maintain that the Jats began switching their loyalty from the Congress to the BJP soon after 1998 assembly polls when Maderna, who was seen as the man who pivoted the Congress to its best-ever victory in the state, was overlooked for the CM’s chair. Maderna was forced to settle for the Assembly Speaker’s post while Gehlot, who hadn’t contested the assembly election, was first handpicked by Sonia Gandhi for the role in 1998.

In the 2003 assembly polls, the Jats had decisively swerved right and voted for the BJP; a move attributed to two primary triggers – first, then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s decision to consider reservations for the community and second, the emergence of Vasundhara Raje, who asserted her identity as daughter-in-law of the Jats, as the BJP’s face in Rajasthan.

Accounting for nearly 15 per cent of Rajasthan’s electorate, the Jats are numerically the biggest caste in the state, and also have the highest representation in the current state assembly (30 out of 200 MLAs). Pilot’s well-calibrated outreach in the Jat belt is possibly aimed at projecting him as not just a leader of his Gujjar community, which is estimated at around eight per cent of the state’s population, but one who enjoys support among the state’s “chhattis qaum” (36 communities), including the Jats.

Significantly, Pilot’s anti-Gehlot rebellion in 2020 too included prominent Jat leaders – Bharatpur royal Vishvendra Singh, Hemaram Chaudhary, Mukesh Bhakar, Birjendra Ola and Ramniwas Gawadiya, among others – who enjoy substantial clout in their respective constituencies.

That Pilot was focussing on Jat-dominated areas also stirs political imagination for two other reasons. First, his decision to choose Nagaur, the Lok Sabha constituency of Rashtriya Loktantrik Party chief Hanuman Beniwal, a prominent Jat leader. Second, and more importantly, Pilot’s Jat outreach comes at a time when the BJP’s tallest leader in the state, former CM Vasundhara Raje, who commands a formidable clout among the Jats on account of being married into the Jat royalty of Dholpur, has been sidelined by her party’s central leadership of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.

It is widely rumoured that among other reasons for Pilot’s coup against Gehlot not succeeding in 2020 was also Raje’s lack of interest in aiding the BJP to exploit the turbulence that had hit the Congress. With no guarantee of being made the CM in the event of Gehlot’s government being replaced by the BJP, Raje had confined herself to her Dholpur residence for the entirety of Pilot’s month-long rebellion even as her intra-party rivals — Rajasthan BJP chief Satish Poonia, leader of Opposition Gulab Chand Kataria, deputy LoP Rajendra Rathore and Union minister Gajendra Shekhawat — held daily discussions on the developing situation.

Raje’s wait-and-watch

With Raje still unsure of the role Modi and Shah have in mind for her in Rajasthan’s politics and, hence, adopting a wait and watch stance before revealing her future political moves, the Jats in Rajasthan, say sources close to Pilot, may again back the Congress in the assembly polls. Gehlot too has been acutely aware of this, which explains why, in the aftermath of Pilot’s rebellion that had cost the Tonk MLA his position as the Rajasthan Congress chief, the CM had backed three-term MLA Govind Singh Dotasra, a Jat, to lead the state party unit. However, Dotasra’s area of influence is largely limited to his home district of Sikar. This allows Pilot, with his impressive line-up of influential Jat satraps like Vishvendra Singh, Hemaram, Mukesh Bhakar and others, to endear himself to the community.

For the Congress this is both good news and bad. If Pilot succeeds in amping up his popularity by broadening his base among the Jats as well as the Gujjars, he could swing a major chunk of the electorate to vote for the Congress. This would also make it more difficult for the Congress to ignore his claim on Gehlot’s current job. The party will ill-afford to slight Pilot any further in an election year and force him to chart his own political path distinct from the Congress.

At the same time, the Congress also knows that Gehlot is no pushover and his personal dislike for Pilot may surpass his political animus with the BJP. The CM and his loyalists have been asserting that the state government’s popularity is at an all-time high, despite the paper leak scandal and farmer distress in the state. Additionally, Rahul has frequently lavished high praise on Gehlot’s pet schemes such as the Chiranjeevi Yojana and the MNREGA-style urban employment guarantee scheme.

Tricky task for Kharge

This makes replacing Gehlot ahead of the elections a tricky task for Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. Gehlot’s loyalists have made it amply clear that they won’t work under Pilot. Kharge has had first-hand experience of this as he, alongwith Ajay Maken, was sent by then party chief Sonia Gandhi to Jaipur in September to effect a change of guard by convening a Congress Legislature Party meet where Pilot was to ostensibly be endorsed for the CM’s role and Gehlot pushed up the organisational ladder to take over as Congress chief. Over 90 MLAs loyal to Gehlot had boycotted the CLP meet. Kharge is thus aware that forcing Gehlot and his loyalists to accept Pilot as CM could prove counter-productive and may even see a re-run of the disaster Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi brought upon the Congress last year with their poorly executed change of guard in Punjab six months ahead of the state’s assembly polls.

The Congress may like to believe that the massive outpouring of public support at Pilot’s Kisan Sammelans will hold the party in good stead come election time. But the 45-yearold Tonk MLA has also shown that he is finally learning the ropes of power politics; a personal gain for Pilot that may not pan out favourably for the Congress if it doesn’t find a quick and advantageous resolution to its Rajasthan riddle.