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Jaipur: The next assembly election in Rajasthan – expected to be held in November-December 2028 – is a little over two years away.

In recent months, the opposition Congress has repeatedly asserted that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government will be voted out of power in 2028 by the public of the state, which has not seen an incumbent government repeat itself since 1998.

The Congress has also constantly labelled the Bhajan Lal Sharma-led government in the state as parchi sarkar – a government which runs on the basis of instructions sent by the BJP’s central leadership on slips – a phenomenon that the party says the public won’t accept.

While the Congress seems confident of a victory in the state where politics is largely bipolar with a clear contest between it and the BJP, recent developments suggest that the thaw in the generational battle within the Rajasthan unit of the grand old party – which was in place since it was relegated to the opposition benches in 2023 – has ended.

On June 7, statements made by senior Congress leader and former chief minister Ashok Gehlot once again brought back his rivalry with Congress national general secretary and former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot. Later, supporters of Pilot too hit back, bringing back the long-running feud between the two leaders to the spotlight.

‘Pilot should accept his mistake, MLAs didn’t want to accept him as CM’

“Pilot saab should accept the truth. Only humans make mistakes, I can also make (mistakes). He made a mistake, he should accept it,” Gehlot told reporters in Hindi, while once again invoking the 2020 political crisis in the state during the tenure of the previous Congress government.

In a long diatribe, Gehlot once again recounted his version of the events in July-August 2020, when uncertainty had loomed over the future of the then Congress government for a month, when Pilot and his 18 loyalist Congress MLAs, had camped in Manesar in BJP-ruled Haryana and later in Delhi after the Gehlot government sent Pilot notice under sedition, alleging that there was a conspiracy to topple the government. Notably, the police were directly under the control of chief minister Gehlot, who held the Home portfolio.

At the time, Pilot was removed from his twin posts of state Congress president and deputy chief minister and after a month-long period of uncertainty when MLAs from both the Gehlot and Pilot factions remained confined in hotels to prevent them from switching sides, a fragile truce was brokered by the party high........

© The Wire