Experience trumps youth in Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot returns for third stint as CM

Pilot reportedly put up a fight staking his claim to the post on the ground that he had galvanised the party after the defeat in 2013 when he was appointed the state party chief. But the Congress high command has gone with experience rather than the young turk. “If the Congress had received a thumping majority, Pilot’s candidature would have become clearer,” a party leader had said.

Welcoming the party high command’s decision, Gehlot posted on Twitter: “I am thankful to Rahul Gandhi and other party leaders for providing me with another opportunity to serve the people of Rajasthan.”

“I would like to thank Rahul Gandhi and other legislators for taking this decision to make Ashok Gehlot Ji the Chief Minister of Rajasthan. Together, we will form the government,” Sachin Pilot told reporters.

The Congress fell short of a majority by one seat in the 200-member Assembly even though it has the backing of its pre-poll ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which won one seat, and six BSP MLAs.

Gehlot’s first stint as CM was in 1998-2003 and the second ended in 2013 with BJP’s Vasundhara Raje succeeding him each time.

Although Gehlot’s low acceptability among the Jat community has always been a negative factor for him, his acceptability among other castes and communities, combined with his humble background has ensured that he remains a famous politician. People still remember his previous tenure as chief minister with the fondness for the social welfare schemes that touched all communities in the state.

The decision by Gandhi was not easy since he had to balance caste and factional equations with an eye on 2019, apart from the challenge to strike the right chord on the generation race. Gehlot belongs to the Mali community, which has a significant presence in different areas across the state.

A son of a magician, some people in the party call him “gilli billi“, a tag that referred to his past when he performed magic as an assistant to his father Laxman Singh Daksh. He is also known as “Rajasthan’s Gandhi” for his simple lifestyle and mass connect.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the central Congress observers KC Venugopal and Avinash Pandey met the newly elected MLAs in a bid to find out their CM preference. However, they were unable to take a decision and authorised Gandhi to select the CM for the western state.

Sources in the Pilot camp said the state Congress chief had the support of a large number of young MLAs, most from the Ajmer, Bharatpur and Jaipur divisions. They said the “weakest spot” was the Jodhpur division, Gehlot’s home turf.