Bitter Gehlot, Pilot fight intensifies in Rajasthan

NEW DELHI: The two warring Congress leaders in Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot, are again making their battle cries heard. However, this time, many in the party believe that the calling out of each other is a fight to the finish which would eventually bring the party to its knees.
Moreover, there are murmurs in the party that Pilot may leave the party next month (on 11 June). But a senior leader close to Pilot said, “Things will get clear within 20 days as the pressure of Karnataka elections is over. Something significant may happen in Rajasthan as there are so many top positions vacant in the state. The Campaigns Committee chairman is one such position and if Pilot gets it, as he has chances, then the whole drama will be sorted. And moreover Pilot announcing his own party is a rumour. If something happens between two people, it will remain between them and if they want 100 people to know about it, then they will have already planned that. And he leaving party being decided a month before seems a rumour.” After Pilot did press conference, there is a widespread understanding among leaders that he did it deliberately to harm the party. A section of party leaders say that Pilot is now on a completely different track where he need not care about the high command and Congress, as he has started pushing the party’s central leadership to expel him from the party. And this more hardened stance has happened after his conversation with Prashant Kishor. He may be working according to a strategy worked out by the ace strategist Kishor. Sources said that Pilot is on his way to leave the party and may have already talked to AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal to negotiate a deal. However, the details are not clear, but it is thought that Pilot would focus on around 65 seats and pursue to become the king-maker in the state. However, analysts on the ground say he would be successful to be victorious on only around10 seats and thus, his new formation may not be able to create a huge dent. Pilot loyalists call the manoeuvres of Gehlot—subtly calling out Pilot while the Karnataka’s elections were going on—as desperate measures to survive within the party. The political watchers in the state say he is off to a big game. “He wants to survive in the party for that he needs to decimate Pilot,” a political analyst said. The popular sentiments among the Gandhis and the party loyalists is that both the leaders have damaged the Congress more than any opposition could. A Congress leader said, “Both the leaders, with their selfish ambitions, have brought the party down to scruples. They have harmed the Congress cadre and created a deeper devide, so much so that the party leaders have become demotivated. With that, they have also reduced the value of the party in the state.”
Gehlot and Pilot, according to sources, have both lost the respect of Gandhis as they have continued to undermine the peacekeeping efforts of the high command. There are assumptions that both are trying to blackmail the party leadership. There are more far-fetched assumptions that Gehlot would also leave the party after coordinating with the BJP strong woman Vasundhara Raje, who would also leave (owing to her allegedly sore relations with Amit Shah) and then they could form their own party. The dissatisfaction in the party does not come only from the party’s recent internal survey which predicted victory on just around 50 seats, but also from the current environment in the state with the cadre claiming that if the party continues to slip downwards like this, “we could even get less than 30 seats”.