Live to Die Another Day

The month-long political drama in Rajasthan, with the fate of the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government hanging tantalisingly in the balance, came to an end on August 10, after peace talks in Delhi featuring the disaffected former deputy CM Sachin Pilot, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his sister and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi.

- Kaushik Deka and Rohit Parihar

Pilot said he was “committed to working in the interest of the party and the Congress government in Rajasthan” while party president Sonia Gandhi has promised a three-member committee to address the issues raised by Pilot and his band of 18 rebel MLAs.

Congress sources say the committee will have Priyanka, party treasurer Ahmed Patel and organisational secretary K.C. Venugopal, but there’s no official word yet.

The party, however, made it quite clear that neither would Gehlot be removed as chief minister—Pilot’s original demand and the trigger for the revolt—nor would Pilot get back the positions he has been stripped of, including president of the Rajasthan Congress unit. “In a democracy, how can the party remove a leader who has the support of a majority of the MLAs?” asks Avinash Pande, Congress general secretary in-charge of Rajasthan. How ever, the manner in which this internal conflict in the Congress has been “resolved” signals not only a big climbdown by Pilot but has also established that Congress veterans such as Gehlot still have it in them to foil the BJP’s now settled way of destabilising opposition governments in states, manoeuvres perfected under the stewardship of former party president Amit Shah.