Performance anxiety

AICC general secretary Ashok Gehlot has suddenly fallen out of favour at 10 Janpath. As the Congress high command reviews the party strategy keeping in mind the changing scenario arising out of the Gurjjar agitation in Rajasthan, Gehlot is nowhere among Sonia Gandhi’s advisors. When Sonia visited the victims of the Jaipur serial bomb blasts last month, she did not speak a word to Gehlot, even though he hung around. Recently, when she constituted a fact-finding team to visit the trouble-torn areas in Rajasthan and meet the Gurjjar victims of police firing, a glaring omission from the list was Gehlot. According to party sources, the Congress president turned against the former Rajasthan CM after his dismal run as AICC general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh where the party fared poorly in the last Assembly election. As AICC general secretary in charge of Delhi too, Gehlot has been facing criticism for extending support to Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit’s detractors in the party