Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s recent remarks about former CM Vasundhara Raje and two other BJP leaders helping save his government during the 2020 political crisis have turned up the heat in the state. The comments assume further significance because of their timing, coming just when multiple power struggles are underway in the state within both the Congress and the BJP. Last month, the ball was in former Deputy CM and Gehlot’s chief rival Sachin Pilot’s court after his allégations of corruption during the Raje government’s tenure and that they were not being probed. The Tonk MLA’s camp has been implying that the Gehlot administration went soft on these alleged corruption cases because of alleged collusion between the two. Gehlot countered this by bringing back the ghost of the 2020 political crisis. Now, the CM has put both Pilot and Raje in a tough spot — and has once again underlined that the cauldron of factionalism in the Congress state unit will continue to simmer even ahead of the coming Assembly elections. By saying that Congress MLAs accepted money — a charge that has always been vehemently denied by the 18 Congress MLAs who sided with Pilot in 2020 — Gehlot has raised questions of propriety in the Pilot camp. Just a day before the explosive speech in Dholpur, Pilot had declared at a rally in Barmer district that he would “continue to raise his voice against corruption”. Talking to reporters later, he once again reiterated his demand for a probe into the alleged corruption cases from Raje’s time. Gehlot’s reply to Pilot – he did not name him once in his speech – was swift. He urged “Congress MLAs who took money from the BJP to return it” and even offered to arrange the money himself. Throughout his speech, Gehlot targeted Union Ministers Amit Shah, Dharmendra Pradhan, and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, with whom he shares a tumultuous relationship. Shekhawat currently represents Jodhpur in the Lok Sabha, a constituency that had in the past elected Gehlot five times. In 2019, the CM’s son, Vaibhav, lost the seat to Shekhawat. This time around, the message is clear from Gehlot. If the Pilot camp targets him for not taking action against alleged corruption cases from the tenure of the previous government, he will hit back with his claim of Congress MLAs taking money from the BJP in 2020. Congress Rajasthan in-charge Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa also used the same tactic recently. Asked about Pilot’s demand for action against Gehlot loyalists who skipped a CLP meeting in September last year and held a parallel meeting with MLAs to stall Pilot’s CM bid, Randhawa promptly spoke of the 2020 political crisis, calling it a “rebellion”. But the big question is why Gehlot praised Raje. The answer can be gauged from Raje’s reaction to Gehlot. She issued a scathing statement on Sunday night, saying that Gehlot was “engineering a big conspiracy against her” and “nobody has insulted her the way Gehlot has in his life”. By praising Raje, the two-time CM and the BJP’s most well-known face in Rajasthan, Gehlot likely is trying to drive a wedge within the already divided state BJP that has multiple leaders with chief ministerial ambitions. Shekhawat, for example, is a known detractor of Raje. Back in 2018, Raje had put her foot down when the party wanted to install the MP as state BJP president. Gehlot’s praise for Raje could diminish her equation with the BJP high command, with whom she already shares a frosty relationship. In the recent past, the BJP central leadership has also cut several regional satraps to size. Gehlot, who is leaving no stone unturned to retain power by breaking a 25-year-old trend of the incumbent government changing every five years, also knows that whenever Raje has been declared the BJP chief ministerial candidate, be it 2003 or 2013, he has been unseated from power. Gehlot has much to gain from the infighting in the BJP in the event of Raje getting sidelined and her loyalists reacting with anger. The Leader of the Opposition in the state, Rajendra Rathore, too hit out at Gehlot for his statements and asked why the CM, also the Home Minister, did not lodge FIRs against the MLAs he accused of accepting money from the BJP. Incidentally, hours after his Sunday speech, Gehlot shared the stage with state minister Ramesh Meena at another programme in Karauli. Meena was among the Pilot loyalists who had camped in Manesar and Delhi during the 2020 crisis. Since then, Meena is known to have switched to the Gehlot camp. He was stripped of his ministerial post after the failed rebellion but was reinstated a year later during the Cabinet expansion.
