Reacting to the Rajasthan Assembly Speaker C P Joshi’s “Office Note” in which he recorded that the 81 MLAs who submitted their resignations in September did not do so voluntarily, a leader in the Sachin Pilot camp on Tuesday said it was not only “grave indiscipline” but also “illegal” to intimidate public representatives. “Intimidating public representatives is punishable by law. And whether they were allured or threatened, the party high command should take cognisance,” said the leader. Pilot, a former deputy Chief Minister, was said to have been the Congress high command’s choice to replace Ashok Gehlot as the Chief Minister when the MLAs — 70 of them from the Congress — submitted their resignation letters to Joshi on September 25, precipitating a crisis. On Monday, Deputy Leader of Opposition Rajendra Rathore, whose PIL in the Rajasthan High Court led to the revelations, told reporters, “If the resignations were not voluntary, then under whose pressure were they submitted?” In his reply to the High Court, Assembly Secretary Mahaveer Prasad Sharma said, “Under what circumstances, the letters of resignation were submitted cannot be commented upon by the answering respondent as those who signed those letters can only explain the same.” According to Sharma’s affidavit, Joshi says in his note that all the 81 MLAs “appeared before me one by one in person and voluntarily submitted prarthana patra (prayer letters) requesting withdrawal of resignation. In their prayer letters, they have clearly mentioned that the resignation letters given earlier were not voluntary.” Among other things, punishment for criminal intimidation is covered under IPC Section 506, with punishment for intimidation — excluding death threat — going up to two years, or with fine, or both. With the names of 81 MLAs also being revealed — and that as many as 38 Congress MLAs did not resign — the Pilot loyalist said it was the media that had been playing up, since September 25, the figure of 90-plus MLAs siding with the Gehlot camp. Throughout the day, the Pilot camp leaders, including Sachin Pilot, maintained a studied silence on the issue. Deputy Chief Whip Mahendra Choudhary said MLAs can resign anytime if they wish to. He told journalists outside the Assembly, “There is no pressure of any kind. It is their right (to resign) and then to withdraw it.” Asked whether he gave his resignation under pressure, Choudhary said, “What pressure? The public elects us — 2.5 lakh voters choose us and send us here (to the Assembly). We work using our brains.” Asked about the case in the High Court, he said, “The court case is different, I don’t wish to speak on it.”
