As the party wins big in Rajasthan local body polls, the Gehlot-Pilot war has clearly hurt Congress

Now even local body elections have become significant, each verdict a litmus test of the ruling BJP’s consolidation of power, each victory in an Opposition-ruled State a vote of no-confidence in the alternative, each mandate in its favour dissolving the boundaries between a local and national issue. So just as the BJP made a statement by making deep inroads in the Hyderabad municipal elections, challenging the myth that it could not pry open that city’s predominantly Islamic culture, it has seized the political discourse in Rajasthan. Upstaging the ruling Congress, the BJP seemed all set to muscle its way back into the panchayat samiti and zila parishad elections held in the State’s 21 districts. At last count, in the panchayat samitis, the BJP won 1,836 seats against the Congress’ 1,718. In the zila parishad, the BJP got 323 seats while Congress won 246. Besieged as it is by the farmers’ protests, the victory was more than sweet for the BJP which claimed that it was an endorsement of the Modi Government’s grassroots governance, including the farm laws, and that the Congress had failed to address local issues, too busy as it was with leadership rows. Though this heightened rhetoric is for popular consumption, the fact of the matter is the BJP has been working hard to rebuild its support in a State that it had lost. And considering its attempts at using Operation Lotus to topple the Ashok Gehlot Government and encash the Chief Minister’s rift with his one-time deputy Sachin Pilot somewhat misfired, it got back to working the grassroots. Having marginalised the outgoing Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, the State BJP chief Satish Poonia and Leader of Opposition, Gulab Chand Kataria, the last a provocative proponent of Hindutva and schooled in RSS’ style of constituency management, have ensured the party’s recovery. But the bigger political takeaway is that they could not do so earlier, simply because Pilot had held on to the Congress organisational matrix during the bypolls to some local bodies in 2019, soon after the mammoth Lok Sabha verdict in favour of Modi. Clearly, the erosion of Pilot’s power and his ongoing rift with Gehlot have finally cost the Congress its primacy in Rajasthan. 

If anything, the results will once again foreground the conflict that never really went away but was just papered over by the Congress high command. Part of the reason why the Central leadership, while respectful of Pilot’s commitment, was worried about Gehlot was because the latter had convinced it of his overarching hold on the State unit and connect with the grassroots. These current results have definitely dented that aura of invincibility and shown that under-using Pilot has hurt the party badly. Gehlot had probably sensed the tide in BJP’s favour given his latest remarks that the saffron party was trying another topple game and had, therefore, argued for his indispensability in a crucial heartland State. The fact of the matter is he didn’t want to give up his fiefdom amid murmurs that he would be given a Central role in the Congress following the death of senior leader Ahmed Patel, a move that would even help the high command argue for a transition of power to Pilot. That he is reluctant about giving up is further obvious from his supporters’ comments that local body polls weren’t indicative of a larger sentiment and that Pilot had not cooperated. The Pilot camp, on the other hand, argued that the BJP gained at the expense of Gehlot’s stubbornness and refusal to change templates. The larger question is how long will Pilot hold on, roaming in the wilderness? Ever since he revolted openly, and the high command pacified him by setting up a coordination committee to settle differences, nothing has been done to his satisfaction, except deploying him as a campaigner for the Madhya Pradesh bypolls. The committee, too, has not got down to deciding the specifics of reconciliation or demarcation of powers between the two. If anything the anxieties continue to fester. There was some talk of a Cabinet reshuffle to accommodate Pilot’s supporters but an egoistic Gehlot has been delaying it. With this on the backburner, any hope of the Pradesh Congress Committee being overhauled to ensure equal representation of both camps has also diminished. Gehlot may have had the majority of the party legislators on his side to hold off the predatory instincts of the BJP, which guaranteed him continuity as a Chief Minister. But what if he loses the numbers that matter, the seats in an election?   Pilot did gift the Congress the 2018 Assembly results, despite Gehlot’s stock being at an all-time low, by crafting the right moves. He has lived down his entitlements and education, moved to Rajasthan, picked up dialects and worked the ground assiduously. He is conscious of his caste endowments, the Gujjar votebank. But while that is a traditional strength, he has played it down and focussed instead on strengthening administration and the organisation. Although not allowed to operate autonomously in governance, Pilot strengthened the party base while ignoring the Lok Sabha elections which Gehlot wanted to use to shore up his strengths. We know how that turned out to be, a complete blank. If the Congress doesn’t want Rajasthan to slip out of its grasp, then it better solve its internecine wars. Given the BJP’s rhetoric and its swift conversion rate, it would be in a commanding position by the time of the next Assembly elections. In fact, the local body polls are just a test run for that. Pretence won’t help the Congress any longer, action will.