The other Gehlot making headlines in Rajasthan now

Following fruitless negotiations, Speaker Vasudev Devnani directed the Marshals to remove the suspended MLAs forcibly on Monday; however, the Marshals were blocked by other Congress MLAs. The Congress MLAs eventually announced a boycott of the proceedings.

The Social Justice and Empowerment Minister, 43-year-old Gehlot sparked off the row on Friday last week when, during the Question Hour, he referred to Indira Gandhi as “aapki daadi (your grandmother)” when attacking the Opposition Benches. Leader of the Opposition Tika Ram Jully termed the minister’s words as “rubbish” and demanded an apology from him.

Security personnel try to prevent Congress workers from moving towards the Assembly during their protest over BJP minister Avinash Gehlot’s remark against former PM Indira Gandhi, in Jaipur, Monday. (Express photo/ Rohit Jain Paras)

Much sloganeering and multiple adjournments later, Dotasra and others were suspended from the Assembly, with the BJP alleging that the Congress MLAs came “too close” to Speaker Vasudev Devnani. The Congress, on its part, has questioned why Devnani has not even expunged Gehlot’s remarks.

Urban Development Minister Jhabar Singh Kharra said that Gehlot’s remarks were “not unparliamentary or offensive”. However, he added: “The party believes he should not have said this in the House.” As for the row, Kharra said it should be settled as Gehlot has already apologised for it.

Gehlot, elected for the second time from Jaitaran in Pali in the December 2023 Assembly elections, was not much known during his first term. However, this has changed since he was made a minister after the BJP returned to power. Even as he was assuming charge as a minister in January last year, Gehlot grabbed eyeballs for hanging photos of RSS founder K B Hedgewar and M S Golwalkar in his office. In an interview then, he defended, “Since my childhood, I have grown up with this ideology. From the ABVP to the VHP, Bajrang Dal, Sangh, these are all in my blood.”

The association with the RSS is also seen as partially the reason behind his appointment as a Cabinet minister into just his second term as an MLA.

In May last year, he again made it to the headlines when he said the BJP government will review reservations to Muslims under the OBC quota. “As part of its appeasement politics, the Congress government gave reservation to 14 Muslim castes under the OBC category between 1997 and 2013. We have all those circulars and, in due time, the department and the government will review it,” he said.

Gehlot added: “Babasaheb Ambedkar said in the Constitution that reservation cannot be granted to any caste, community or class on the basis of religion. So, when something is prohibited in the Constitution… the reservation (on the basis of religion) is wrong,” he said, adding that “lots of complaints” had been received by the government regarding this and was looking at the same.

While there has been no word on it from the minister since, the Rajasthan High Court, in an unrelated case, ruled this month that a person belonging to the Teli caste can’t be denied OBC reservation for merely being from the Muslim community.

More recently, Gehlot left many red faces in the BJP when, during a programme in Pali, as someone handed him a slip, he joked that “our government itself is running with a parchi (chit)”.

The Congress has thrown this charge at the Bhajan Lal Sharma government since the start, saying the Chief Minister and his government lack agency and are run by the party’s central leadership via the “parchi system” – in a reference to the paper slip reportedly containing Sharma’s name for CM shared at the last minute by the Centre after the Assembly elections.

Hailing from the OBC Mali community, like former Congress CM Ashok Gehlot, Avinash Gehlot won his first election in 2018 when he defeated the Congress’s Dilip Choudhary by over 12,000 voters. He retained his seat in 2023 when he defeated Surendra Goyal of the Congress by over 13,000 votes.

A lawyer by profession, Gehlot got associated with the BJP first through its students’ wing Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM). In 2013, he was associated with the party’s media cell in Pali and in 2014, became a member of state executive of the BJYM. In 2019, he was associated with the party’s Lok Sabha campaign in Rajsamand.