Parachuting to Pilot Land?
Ashok Gehlot may have been appointed Congress general secretary recently, but that doesn’t mean he has shelved his ambitions for a return to Rajasthan. He was recently overheard pointing out that whenever he has been sent to Rajasthan as Chief Minister, it has been from New Delhi. Gehlot is a two-term CM and preceding his first stint in 1998, he was the state Pradesh Congress Committee chief and a Lok Sabha member. Preceding his second stint, he was a general secretary at the AICC when he was sent back to the state in 2008. Now he is clearly hoping for a repeat third term and given his equation with the newly minted Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Gehlot may just get his wish. Which of course cannot be very good news for the state PCC chief Sachin Pilot.
Trouble for Scindia?
Is another young member of Team Rahul facing a similar existential crisis? As mentioned last week, the return of Digvijaya Singh from his spiritual parikrama back to political parikrama cannot be good news for Jyotiraditya Scindia. The former Madhya Pradesh CM has made it clear that Scindia’s candidature doesn’t have his backing. But his old friend Kamal Nath could make the grade and emerge as consensus candidate. Clearly, this is one reason why Rahul Gandhi has decided not to go in for a CM face in either of the two states going to polls.
Missing a crisis manager
Is the government missing a crisis manager in Arun Jaitley’s absence? As the Finance Minister recovers from his illness, it was left to other ministers to handle the fallout of the Unnao and Kathua rape crises. Meenakshi Lekhi, being a woman, a lawyer and a spokesperson, was fielded to the media, but somehow her intervention did not have the same finesse as Jaitley’s. In the end, when the issue of the CJI impeachment and the ATM cash shortage came up, one could see Jaitley using social media for damage control.