Decode Politics: Should we be talking about Rajesh Pilot?

As the state president at the time, the young Pilot had led the Congress campaign against the incumbent BJP. Despite his almost constant efforts, Pilot failed to stop Ashok Gehlot from becoming CM, and has not been able to dislodge him from the post since. On the other hand, his 2020 failed rebellion left him without a place in the Cabinet as well as cost him the post of state Congress chief.

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He remained a leader without a post till the Congress recently accommodated him in the CWC.

Is the BJP right in raking up Rajesh Pilot in this context? Here’s a look:

Why Rajesh Pilot

A former IAF squadron pilot, Rajeshwar Prasad, as was Rajesh Pilot’s formal name, was one of the lateral entries into the Congress during Indira Gandhi’s time and soon became a trusted colleague of Rajiv Gandhi. The two came together reportedly over their love for flying, which also earned Pilot his new name.

Why Pilot family remains significant

Rajesh Pilot entered the Lok Sabha from Bharatpur in Rajasthan in 1980, a year after he resigned from the IAF and joined an out-of-power Congress. Hailing from Baidpura, a nondescript village near Ghaziabad mostly inhabited by Gujjars, he was already a hero among the community for having risen from very harsh times. After the death of his father, an Army havildar, Pilot Senior was known to have sold milk to help out the family.

As an IAF pilot, Rajesh Pilot saw action during the 1971 war with Pakistan. In politics, he successfully challenged the upper caste elite. Seen as a grassroots leader, he would go on to become MP six times, and serve as a minister at the Centre in both the Rajiv Gandhi and P V Narasimha Rao governments.

What was the PM talking about

Modi was presumably referring to the time when, after the end of Narasimha Rao’s tenure as both PM and Congress president, and a year of Sitaram Kesri in the latter job, an election was held for the post. Sonia Gandhi was not in the picture yet, having refused appeals to join politics following Rajiv’s assassination in 1991. Neither was any other Gandhi family member.

Pilot and Maharashtra veteran Sharad Pawar both threw their hats into the ring against Kesri – who had been appointed interim president a year earlier. Kesri won hands down, having consolidated his position by then by appointing his people in most of the PCCs.

What followed

Pilot faced no consequences for having laid claim to the Congress president’s post, which few dared do at the time against the high command’s wishes. In fact, Kesri inducted Pilot into his new Congress Working Committee.

Sonia, who took over as Congress president in 1998, retained Pilot in her CWC. The relationship, though, soured later – in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 1999, Pilot openly said that the party should not project a prime ministerial candidate. In 2000, Pilot and other Congress leaders, including Jitendra Prasada, raised questions regarding the leadership (read Sonia). Pilot and Prasada held joint rallies in Jhansi and Lucknow in May of 2000, giving anxious moments to Sonia ahead of the November presidential elections.

On June 11, 2000, Pilot died in a road accident.

Prasada went on to contest against Sonia, and lost miserably.

Why Pilot still important

Sachin inherited his father’s legacy after his death. Having finished his education abroad, he entered the Lok Sabha in 2004 and had a rapid rise. He was made a minister in the UPA II government – first as Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology and then elevated as MoS (Independent Charge), Corporate Affairs. In 2014, he was appointed Rajasthan Congress president.

Like his father, the Gujjar community saw Sachin too as one among them despite his Delhi upbringing. During his stint as party president, Sachin tried to reach out to the Meena community and forged a Gujjar-Meena-Muslim-Dalit combination, which powered the Congress to power in Rajasthan in 2018.

The Gujjars are estimated to be around 9-10% of the population in Rajasthan and consequential to the outcome of 40-odd seats in its eastern parts (out of the state’s total of 200).

On Rajesh Pilot’s short-lived alleged rebellion against the Congress, sources close to Sachin say the rallies he had attended along with Prasada were actually party programmes, and that it was Prasada who projected them as a challenge to Sonia, to aid his election bid.

Incidentally, Pawar, who had taken on Kesri along with Rajesh Pilot in that 1997 contest, split from the Congress in 1999 after he, Tariq Anwar and P A Sangma were expelled from the Congress after raising Sonia’s “foreign origins” issue. Now, as NCP supremo, he is one of the Congress’s closest allies.

Jitendra Prasada died in January 2001, months after his high-profile contest against Sonia. Like Sachin, the Congress gave a ticket to his son Jitin Prasada in 2004 from Uttar Pradesh. In his second term as MP, the Congress elevated him as a minister. He was MoS in charge of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Road Transport and Highways and HRD from 2011 to 2014.

In 2020, Jitin was the first among the Group of 23 leaders who wrote to Sonia seeking radical changes in the organisation. In June 2021, he left the Congress and joined the BJP. He is now a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh.