Cong’s top 4 faces in Rajasthan: The King, the Challenger, the Critic and the ‘Professor’

Ashok Gehlot, 72

An Economics post-graduate with a law degree, Gehlot first entered politics via the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) in college, and was its state president 1974-79. In 1979, he became the Jodhpur district president of the Congress and was the state chief by 1985.

Between 1980 and 1999, Gehlot was elected as the Lok Sabha MP from Jodhpur five times. The only time he lost was in 1989, to the BJP’s Jaswant Singh. As MP, he was also a minister in the governments of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and P V Narasimha Rao.

In 1999, Gehlot moved to the state, winning in an Assembly bypoll from Sardarpura. He has held the seat since then. He became the CM for the first time in 1998, and then again in 2008. This is Gehlot’s third term as CM, and his most challenging.

In 2020, he had to simultaneously navigate Covid and a Sachin Pilot-led rebellion. By creditably leading Rajasthan through the pandemic, fighting back the 2020 and other leadership crises, and with his welfare schemes, Gehlot has built a solid base among voters and is still seen as largely popular.

Sachin Pilot, 46

In perception terms, Gehlot’s former deputy is as different as it gets from him. A trained pilot, with a foreign degree behind him, and seen as more at home in Delhi power circles than dusty Rajasthan villages, Pilot proved his mettle when the Congress won the 2018 Assembly elections under him as state unit chief. However, what he saw as his crowning moment never came to be.

Pilot’s political debut came after his father and senior Congress leader Rajesh Pilot died in a road accident in June 2000. After his mother Rama won Pilot Senior’s Dausa Lok Sabha seat, the mantle passed on to Sachin by 2004. That year, he became the youngest-ever Lok Sabha MP at the age of 26, and was re-elected in 2009 from Ajmer.

When the Congress registered its worst-ever Rajasthan Assembly tally of 21 seats out of 200 in 2013, the party made him PCC president. While he lost the Ajmer Lok Sabha seat in 2014 amidst the Narendra Modi wave, Pilot redeemed himself with the 2018 win.

Pilot has spent the five years since trying to get Gehlot to give up his CM post for him. His 2020 rebellion, however, had ended in an embarrassing loss of face, with Gehlot consequently removing him from all party posts.

While Gehlot has indicated he won’t be going into the sunset anytime soon, Pilot is practising the virtue of patience, reportedly counselled to wait his turn by the high command. In the coming elections, the party will look to him to shore up its votes in eastern Rajasthan, especially of Gujjars.

Govind Singh Dotasra, 59

Dotasra, a trained lawyer, too entered politics via the NSUI, moving on to the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) and eventually the Congress.

But he won his first election only in 2005 at the age of 41, when he was elected pradhan of the Laxmangarh Panchayat Samiti in Sikar. That marked an upswing in his fortunes. In the 2008 next Assembly elections, he won the Laxmangarh seat.

In 2013, he was among the handful of Congress candidates who didn’t just win but also retained their seat. His performance in the state Assembly sealed his place in the party. As party whip, Dotasra was a fierce critic of the then ruling BJP, and won the ‘Best MLA’ award in 2016. By the end of his second tenure, he had emerged as a top Jat face in the state, helping the Congress balance its caste equations.

As Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Tourism and other departments since 2018, Dotasra has clashed with the BJP over changes in school curricula.

Following Pilot’s rebellion, Dotasra was made the state president in July 2020. In November 2021, he resigned as minister following the party’s ‘one person one post’ rule.

Dotasra was in the news recently for Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids in connection with the 2021 Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET).

C P Joshi, 73

Known as ‘Professor’ in party circles, Joshi holds two Masters degrees – MSc in Physics and MA in Psychology, as well as a PhD in Psychology and an LLB . He worked as a lecturer for a while at an Udaipur college and later was a professor of psychology.

Joshi’s first brush with politics came in 1973, when he was elected president of the Udaipur University Students’ Union. He was elected MLA from Nathdwara in 1980, 1985, 1998, 2003 and 2018. He first became a minister in the state government in 1998, with Gehlot as CM.

In 2008, while the Congress came close to a majority and eventually formed a government, Joshi himself lost to the BJP’s Kalyan Singh Chouhan by just 1 vote.

In 2009, he was elected as an MP for the first time, from the Bhilwara seat, and was immediately made a Union minister. He held various portfolios between 2009 and 2013.

He became the Assembly Speaker in 2019 and is known as a stickler for rules, not hesitating to pull up Gehlot’s Cabinet ministers.

Currently, he is heading the party’s manifesto committee and is also a member of its 10-member election core committee, headed by state in-charge Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa.