A death anniversary 5 years apart: How fate made a U-turn for Sachin Pilot

A week, as the cliche goes, is a long time in politics. Five years would, perhaps, be another lifetime altogether. On June 11 (Wednesday), a host of Congress leaders made their way to Bhandana village in Rajasthan’s Dausa to join party leader Sachin Pilot in paying homage to his father, late Rajesh Pilot, on his 25th death anniversary.

The otherwise solemn occasion instantly became the subject of frenzied political banter but one that stood in complete contrast to the cacophony around the same event five years ago. If Wednesday’s gathering was a show of unity and mending fences, the one held in 2020 was a portent of rebellion and discord.

Though Sachin Pilot’s politics was a common link between the two, the current one showed beyond doubt an ascendant star in an otherwise beleaguered Congress; a volte face of fate from five years ago when the then 42-year-old Gurjar leader was staring at the crossroads of a bleak political future.

Then and now

Among the Congress leaders who reached Bhandana on Wednesday were state party chief Govind Singh Dotasra, Leader of Opposition in the Rajasthan Assembly Tikaram Jully, AICC in-charge of the state Sukhjinder Randhawa, Indian Youth Congress president Uday Bhanu Chib and his NSUI counterpart Varun Chaudhary, All India Mahila Congress president Alka Lamba and over 40 of the party MLAs, among others.

Most significant, though, was the presence of former chief minister Ashok Gehlot—his bitter intra-party rivalry and turf war with Sachin Pilot a subject of perpetual discussion, not just in the power corridors of Rajasthan but nationally. From Bhandana, Gehlot and Sachin projected an image of unity, of letting bygones be bygones, of burying the proverbial hatchet; all in the interest of the Congress party. Their supporters, bitterly divided into two camps for years, were all cheers. Gehlot claimed he and Sachin had “never been apart” and there was “always love and affection” between them.

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Sachin, of course, had made the first move at a rapprochement. After steadfastly avoiding to share space publicly with Gehlot for the past five years, save at the odd party meeting or rally, Sachin had personally gone over to the Congress veteran’s residence last week and invited him to the Prerna Diwas gathering in Bhandana. Yet, few thought that Sachin’s gesture would suffice to bridge the wide gulf that had separated him from Gehlot.

All is well

The image of Gehlot and Sachin seated next to each other enjoying a meal, posing together for photographs and soundbites would have made even Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, India’s reigning poster boy of effortless turnarounds, blush.

Five years earlier, a majority of those present in Bhandana this Wednesday, Gehlot included, had given the Prerna Diwas gathering a miss. The event was attended largely by Sachin’s loyalists who were hoping that the young Gurjar leader, then deputy chief minister under Gehlot, would clear the air on his next political course.

The Congress’s central leadership, too, was keeping a close eye on what Sachin would say or do at the Bhandana gathering of June 11, 2020. Speculation over his growing unease at Gehlot’s refusal to leave the chief minister’s chair for him had reached a fever pitch. The Congress had every reason to fear the worst. A few months earlier, Jyotiraditya Scindia had helped topple the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh by getting nearly two dozen party MLAs loyal to him defect to the BJP. Then, on March 10, the birth anniversary of his father and late Congress stalwart Madhavrao Scindia, Jyotiraditya crossed over to the BJP.

The 2020 drama

If Scindia utilised his father’s birth anniversary to defect to the BJP, could Sachin follow suit now on his father’s death anniversary was a question many asked back then. However, the event on June 11, 2020 concluded with nothing of the sort happening and the Congress heaved a collective sigh of relief, only to be jolted exactly a month later when Sachin, along with 18 MLAs loyal to him, left Rajasthan for a resort in BJP-ruled Haryana on July 11, triggering fears of a coup against Gehlot.

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For the next one month, MLAs loyal to Sachin camped at a resort in Haryana’s Manesar while those supporting Gehlot’s claim, over 100 in number, including independent legislators, shifted to a resort in Jaisalmer. That Sachin’s coup was a failed bid had become clear. He couldn’t muster the support of enough MLAs to dislodge Gehlot and ended up losing both crucial posts he held at the time; those of deputy chief minister and state Congress chief, the latter of which passed on to Gehlot loyalist Govind Singh Dotasra.

After a month-long stalemate that saw an otherwise composed Gehlot slamming Sachin as a “naakara aur nikamma” (ineffective and worthless) leader while Sachin silently kept his counsel, it was Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, with some help from the late Ahmed Patel, who brokered an uneasy truce. Sachin came out looking like the only loser in the bargain — stripped of his posts and left with just the identity of being the party MLA from Tonk. Gehlot continued as CM, now seemingly more powerful than ever, having saved one of the Congress’s only three remaining state governments in the country then from being toppled.

Sachin’s turnaround

Politics, though, isn’t a one-round game. By the end of 2022, Sachin had slowly begun to earn back the Congress high command’s confidence, campaigning hard for the party whenever asked, walking alongside Rahul Gandhi frequently during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, creating no fresh trouble for Gehlot in Rajasthan and always full of deferential devotion towards the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Meanwhile came the Congress’s presidential elections and a slip that many in the party believe severely dented Gehlot’s standing with the central leadership. In September 2022, then interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi summoned Gehlot to Delhi and urged him to fill his nomination for the forthcoming election to pick the next party chief. While many believed the self-proclaimed Sonia loyalist would accept the decree, Gehlot resisted; seeing the ‘elevation’ as a ploy to ease him out of the CM’s throne and anoint Sachin in his place.

Gehlot’s loyalists back in Rajasthan went into a huddle and even refused to turn up at a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party that was to be overseen under a team of central observers, including Mallikarjun Kharge. Gehlot loyalist and then minister Shanti Dhariwal launched an all-out verbal attack at Sonia Gandhi, something the party high command saw as an act of defiance by Gehlot himself. Ironically, a few days later, the high command tapped Kharge, who had returned to Delhi from Jaipur spurned by Gehlot’s loyalists, for the party’s presidential election.

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Turn of fortunes

Kharge’s election as Congress president didn’t bring any immediate setback for Gehlot though. Gehlot continued as Rajasthan CM and no disciplinary action was taken against him for his defiance. Then, 10 months into his tenure as party chief, Kharge revamped the Congress Working Committee in August 2023 and Sachin found a spot in the party’s highest decision-making body, coupled with the role of party general secretary.

Five months later, when the Congress lost the Rajasthan assembly polls, the blame for the defeat was placed largely on Gehlot’s inability to work with Sachin and address his concerns over the party’s electoral strategy. In the ordinary course of things within the Congress, the person leading the campaign would come under vociferous personal and political attacks from his rivals. Sachin, however, kept his powder dry, instead reaffirming the need to strengthen the party at the grassroots in time for the Lok Sabha polls that were due a few months on.

As luck would have it, after a gap of a decade, the Congress managed to not just open its account in Rajasthan during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls but ended up winning eight of the state’s 25 seats (its allies won another three). A bulk of the winners — Sanjana Jatav, Murari Meena, Harish Meena, Kuldeep Indora, and Bhajanlal Jatav — had been handpicked by Sachin. Gehlot, on the other hand, not only failed to get his loyalists elected but also faced a personal setback with his son, Vaibhav Gehlot, who lost the Jalore seat by a huge margin of over 2 lakh votes five years after making an unsuccessful electoral debut from the family’s home turf of Jodhpur.

Gehlot’s chips down

The chips were clearly down for Gehlot, who may have continued to be a prominent figure at the party’s events and even media briefings but with no real position of power in the organisation. Sachin, on the other hand, has emerged as a prominent talking head of the party, pushed to the vanguard when the Congress wants to address crucial issues, be it concerning farmers, youth and unemployment or the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor.

A senior Rajasthan Congress leader who, over the past decade, has oscillated between the Gehlot and Sachin camps, explained pithily the significance of Wednesday’s Gehlot-Sachin “patch up” at Bhandana. “Gehlot was the party’s past in Rajasthan, Sachin is the future,” the leader, a former MLA, told The Federal, adding “even Gehlot realises that if he wants to secure the political future of Vaibhav and his other loyalists in Rajasthan Congress, he has to make up with Sachin”.

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The race horse

Another Congress leader from the state pointed out that in a month’s time, Dotasra, Gehlot’s loyalist who had replaced Sachin as state unit chief in July 2020, will complete five years in the post. “Dotasra has proven to be a popular leader and had emerged as a key Jat face of the party but he is unlikely to be given an extension as PCC chief. The Congress high command will appoint a new state president and the frontrunner right now is Sachin,” this leader said.

“Sachin is the best bet for the job under the current circumstances, whatever his past record may have been like. And he has also won back the confidence of the high command; in fact, despite all the rumours about his possibility of joining the BJP, he remains the only leader from Rahul’s original ‘baba lobby’ (which also included Jitin Prasad, Milind Deora, Jyotiraditya Scindia, and RPN Singh); he has remained committed to Congress,” this leader said.

Another party veteran used Rahul’s now-famous analogy of “different types of horses” to claim that Sachin had proven himself to be a “race ka ghoda” (race horse) and that Gehlot, who “cannot yet be called a langda ghoda (lame horse) as he still commands huge clout across Rajasthan”, has understood there is “no point in fighting Sachin now and that both of them can protect their interests better by working together instead of sabotaging each other”.