Sachin Pilot's Sweet 17

Young Pilot’s Rajasthan show may also give ideas to Modi to hold Lok Sabha polls this year

- R. Prasannan

Even incurable optimists in the Congress couldn’t believe their ears when they heard the news on February 1 that their party, which was being threatened with extinction in a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’, had pulled off three brilliant poll victories in the BJP bastion of Rajasthan. It had won the Lok Sabha seats of Ajmer and Alwar, and the assembly seat of Mandalgarh.

Three bypoll wins may otherwise look freak victories, but these were not. For, not only had the Congress won the three seats, but also won the majority in all the assembly segments in the two Lok Sabha constituencies. Thus, to them, it was a victory in 17 assembly seats (eight each in Ajmer and Alwar plus Mandalgarh) or, as the young Sachin Pilot who led the party to these wins put it, “defeat of the Raje regime in 17 assembly seats”.

Till now viewed as the puny David of Rajasthan Congress, the 40-yearold Pilot had, through hard work and dedication, persuaded every fifth person who had voted the BJP last time to vote Congress now. “That was the swing—20 per cent of the voters changed sides,” Pilot told THE WEEK.

The shy Pilot gives the credit for the victory to the party’s central leadership, to his dedicated rank and file, and to the misrule of the Vasundhara Raje government. But even his rivals have begun to concede that it was a Pilot show all the way. The party had been a shambles after it ended up with a paltry 21 seats in an assembly of 200 in 2013. When Pilot was appointed state party president in December 2014, it appeared a case of a novice being pushed into a minefield which veterans feared to tread. And, the worst fears of his well-wishers came true when, despite his best efforts, the party lost all the 25 seats in the state to the Narendra Modi wave in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Two defeats in a row, and “we thought we were gone for another two terms”, said Pilot.