With the conclusion of Congress president polls, the focus now seems to be coming back to the power tussle between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot.
The political turmoil in Rajasthan was shelved for a while in wake of the recently concluded Congress president elections, in which Mallikarjun Kharge defeated Shashi Tharoor to become the first non-Gandhi party chief in over 24 years.
However, the focus now seems to be coming back to the power tussle between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot. Several Congress leaders from Rajasthan, including ministers Mahesh Joshi and Shanti Dhariwal, met the party president-elect Kharge in Delhi today.
As pictures of Joshi and Dhariwal congratulating Kharge started doing rounds on social media, Congress MLA from Osian Divya Maderna took to Twitter to slam the duo.
“The conspirators against the high command are the first to go to Delhi to congratulate the new Congress president. Incidentally, Mr. Kharge was one of the observers sent to Jaipur to attend the legislature party meeting who later submitted a written report to the disciplinary committee and on the basis of which the notices were issued,” tweeted Maderna.
“How time changes – They didn’t even come to meet despite Kharge ji called them many times, they boycotted the meeting of the legislature party and held a parallel meeting and when the chief whip (Joshi) and parliamentary affairs ministers (Dhariwal) came as representatives (of MLAs), they put a condition in front of Kharge ji that whatever decision is taken should be taken after October 19 and that we will only meet Sonia Gandhi,” Maderna added in another tweet.
Incidentally, Kharge was appointed as observer by the Congress high command for the CLP meeting that was scheduled to take place on the evening of September 25.
Speculations were rife that following the meeting, road would be clear for Pilot to become the next chief minister of Rajasthan as Gehlot was tipped to the party president.
However, in an unprecedented turn of events, the CLP meeting had to be called off after around 90 Gehlot loyalists held a parallel meeting at Dhariwal’s residence and submitted resignation to Assembly Speaker CP Joshi.
Dhariwal and Rathore, who were served showcause notices by the leadership over the rebellion, are learnt to have expressed their confidence and loyalty towards the party’s high command in reply to the notices served to them.
The report on the crisis, submitted by Kharge and senior leader Jairam Ramesh to the party high command, had neither indicted Gehlot nor gave him a clean chit. However, this eventually resulted in Gehlot pulling out of the rup-up to the coveted post.
For Kharge too, resolving the power tussle in Rajasthan will be a major challenge before anything else, since the generational divide and power tussle is not limited to just one state unit. A change of guard in Rajasthan, if on cards of the party high command, will not be an easy task owing to the massive support of MLAs to Gehlot.
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 "Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot - File Photo")
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