New Delhi: After Sonia Gandhi’s tough stand on the Rajasthan rebellion, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot could end up being a loser as his supporters are reportedly cracking up and are willing to toe the AICC line, party sources said on Tuesday.
“The tough stand of the Congress president is showing results. The rebel lawmakers are cracking up. Many of them are willing to toe the AICC line. After all, they are party MLAs,” a senior AICC functionary involved in managing the Rajasthan crisis said on condition of anonymity.
According to party managers, who are working on Sonia Gandhi’s plan B to find a replacement of Gehlot as the next party chief candidate and a new Chief Minister in the state, the first signs came in the form of Gehlot's confidante and senior minister Shanti Dhariwal doing a complete somersault over the past 24 hours.
Within a day, Dhariwal, who had urged the rebel MLAs on Sunday not to support the AICC bid to change Gehlot as Chief Minister, has started stating publicly that the current crisis would end smoothly and that ultimately the will of party chief Sonia Gandhi would prevail.
“If the rebel leader is changing his position so quickly, the others would follow suit. After all, they are party leaders and got elected on a Congress ticket. Also, they would remember that it was Sonia Gandhi who had asked Gehlot to be the Chief Minister when everyone was talking about Sachin Pilot,” said a CWC member, overseeing the crisis management in Rajasthan.
Also Read: Rajasthan Congress crisis: Sonia puts plan B in operation to checkmate Gehlot camp
According to party insiders, the shift in the stand of Dhariwal is a setback to Gehlot personally as the senior minister had been working closely with the veteran for decades. On Sunday, when Dhariwal did not attend an informal interaction in the presence of the AICC observers Mallikarjun Kharge and Ajay Maken and instead held a parallel meeting of rebel lawmakers, the senior minister had pointed out that the high command asking for a resolution authorizing Sonia Gandhi to nominate the new Chief Minister was a conspiracy against Gehlot.
Hence the rebels had pressed that any such resolution be discussed only after Gehlot was elected party president and the result had been announced on October 19. According to sources, Dhariwal had said that if the high command wanted to replace Gehlot, it should choose from the 102 MLAs that had supported the Chief Minister in 2020 when Sachin Pilot had led a rebellion along with 20 of his supporting MLAs.
“In essence, the rebel MLAs were simply saying a no to Pilot as the new Chief Minister but the manner in which they conducted themselves had shocked Sonia Gandhi,” said a senior AICC leader. “Now, even though Gehlot has conveyed he is sorry about the whole affair, it is unlikely that Sonia Gandhi would change her mind,” he said.
Accordingly, the names of veterans Mukul Wasnik, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Kharge and even Digvijay Singh are being considered probable candidates for the post of next Congress chief. According to sources, Pilot too is playing his cards well and has sent feelers to the AICC that if he is given the responsibility to lead the state government, managing the MLAs would be his task.
Maken is expected to submit a written report over the recent crisis to Sonia shortly and some decisions may then follow, said the sources given that the last date of the filing nomination for the Congress president post is September 30.
