CLIFFHANGER

ON DECEMBER 14, 2018, a little past 2 pm, then Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his party’s two stalwarts in Rajasthan—Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot—came out of a huddle in a corner room of Gandhi’s residence at New Delhi’s 12, Tughlaq Lane. A decision had been taken that Gehlot would be the next chief minister of Rajasthan and Pilot his deputy. The Congress had just won 100 seats in the 200-member Rajasthan assembly and was set to form the government. Before leaving the room, Rahul told the two leaders: “There must be an equitable distribution of power. Gehlot-ji, you will take care of your young colleague.” The leaders exchanged smiles and posed for a photograph, which Rahul tweeted with the caption “United colours of Rajasthan”.

Exactly 19 months later, the Congress, now headed by Rahul’s mother Sonia Gandhi, sacked Pilot as president of the state party unit while Gehlot removed him from his cabinet, marking yet another watershed in a power struggle that began right after that tweet by Rahul. Gehlot and the Congress’s communication in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala levelled a serious charge against Pilot—that he had been hobnobbing with the BJP to topple the Congress government in Rajasthan. Pilot, who, along with his 18 loyalist MLAs, had declined to attend the July 13 Congress legislature party (CLP) meeting convened by Gehlot at his residence, claimed in an exclusive interview to INDIA TODAY that “equitable division of power never happened” and instead he was “humiliated and not allowed to fulfill the commitments made to the voters”. He did take pains, though, to emphasise—“I’m not joining the BJP.” But contrary to Pilot’s claim, multiple audio tapes of MLAs in his camp purportedly discussing the toppling of the Gehlot government have now gone viral on social media. In the tapes, tourism minister Vishvendra Singh (now sacked), MLA Bhanwar Lal Sharma and others can be heard discussing monetary