The truce brokered by the Congress high command between Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and his former deputy Sachin Pilot looks like an ominous development for the BJP. It comes at a time when the ruling BJP is merrily going ahead with its 2024 Lok Sabha electoral strategy of breaking up regional parties, weakening them and forming alliances with the splintered groups. The BJP has been euphoric after splitting first the Shiv Sena and then the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra. This has indeed been a body blow to the Opposition unity, especially after the latter’s big show in Patna which came in the wake of the Congress’ spectacular success in Karnataka. NCP’s Sharad Pawar is a fulcrum of Opposition unity with his astuteness and huge experience in both state and national politics. The revolt by his nephew Ajit Pawar along with several MLAs has left the senior Pawar stunned and lowered his standing as one of the country’s tallest politicians and master strategists.
Since the BJP’s debacle in Karnataka, all eyes are on Rajasthan where a victory in the Assembly polls, four months away, would help the saffron party regain much of the ground lost in southern India. The long running feud between Gehlot and Pilot was tailor-made for the BJP’s brand of “tor-phor” (break and split) politics to decimate the Opposition both at the regional and national levels.
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The Congress high command did well to bestir itself and try to prevent the situation from spinning out of control as it had happened earlier, especially in Madhya Pradesh. Pilot had for the past few weeks been dangerously moving towards splitting the party by confronting his senior and party veteran Gehlot and taking sweet revenge for thwarting his ambition to become the state Chief Minister. In a swift move to appease Pilot, the party sought to erase the trust deficit between the two leaders and announced the reformation of the Rajasthan Public Service Commission and stringent punishment for those who are found to be involved in the leak of question papers set for recruitment examinations. These are the pet demands of Pilot who, along with the issue of alleged corruption by the previous Vasundhara Raje government of the BJP, had made the question paper leak and reforms in the Public Service Commission major grouses against his own government.
It seems the Congress is learning from its earlier mistakes that cost it dearly as it wasted no time in making overtures to the Pilot camp and urged both Gehlot and Pilot followers to make corruption under the BJP a major poll plank. At the same time, it did sound a note of caution that any partyman taking internal matters outside the party forum would face action.
Also, the high command sought to appease Gehlot by calling for a door-to-door campaign on the success of his governance. This is significant, since Rajasthan is known to vote out incumbent governments. Gehlot is making a bold move for his re-election by projecting his government as one that is working to provide relief from inflation and other forms of distress. The result is the slew of schemes, including cooking gas cylinders at a subsidised cost of Rs 500 and health insurance for every family up to Rs 25 lakh. The Chief Minister has been touring the state extensively to publicise these schemes. While all these sop offerings might be considered acceptable in today’s clime, citizens must not forget the grievous damage inflicted on the democratic edifice of India by the Congress. The UPA decade is solely responsible for the terrible times that India is facing currently. The unquenchable thirst for corruption and misuse of power brought about the fall of the Congress and that has reflected on the body politic of the country.
