A meeting of senior Congress leaders in Jaipur today saw a light hearted exchange between Ashok Gehlot, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and Sachin Pilot. The subject — who is in charge.
Gehlot had walked into the room where Pilot and Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa were standing. A beaming Gehlot took the banter further.
Then pointing to Sachin Pilot, he said, “Punjab in-charge”. “I am the permanent in-charge here,” he said.
But after the visit of party general secretary KC Venugopal, the senior leaders have met to brainstorm ahead of the panchayat elections. There is a fertiliser crisis in Rajasthan and the government is not being able to deliver. The BJP is misusing official machinery to win the polls. We will give tickets to candidates with a clean image and will perform well in Rajasthan,” he added.
After the meeting, Pilot said, “We will go to villages, we will win and improve our performance in the panchayat polls.
The meeting of the Congress unit of Rajasthan saw a closed-door interaction between Sachin Pilot — now Punjab in-charge, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, who is in charge of Rajasthan, Gehlot, then leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, Tika Ram Jully and PCC chief Govind Singh Dotasara.
In the recently concluded urban local body polls, the Congress performed well with just a 1 per cent difference in vote share, but lost out in terms of organisational strength. In as many as 113 local bodies there was cross voting and failure to secure Independents, said a source in the Congress.
