Rajasthan crisis: 18 congressmen camp at seaside resort in Manesar, near Delhi
Jaipur:
A Rajasthan police team has left Jaipur for the posh Manesar complex, near Delhi, where 18 congressional lawmakers have been camping for the weekend. For now, the person of interest among them in regards to the police is Bhanwar Lal Sharma, who, according to the Party of Congress, is being heard on tape discussing bribes from the BJP as part of a plot to overthrow the government of Rajasthan led by Ashok Gehlot.
This morning Congress announced that it had suspended Bhanwar Lal Sharma and another deputy, Vishwendra Singh, who the party says is also registered while discussing cash transactions with the BJP. They denied the allegations and said the taped conversations were not authentic.
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot alleged that Pilot, who until Tuesday was No. 2 in his government, was directly involved in the alleged horse trade.
Pilot, after being sacked as deputy chief minister and chairman of the congressional unit in Rajasthan, went to court to challenge the decision to disqualify him and 18 others as members of parliament. Congress says it acted against the party by defying instructions to appear this week at two meetings chaired by Mr. Gehlot. Mr. Pilot is represented by the best lawyers Harish Salve and Mukul Rohatgi. The first was solicitor general of the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee; the latter was Attorney General of the Modi government until 2017.
The long-standing discord between Mr. Gehlot as chief minister and Sachin Pilot as deputy commander went nuclear over the weekend with Mr. Pilot arriving in Delhi to claim that he had 30 MPs with him, enough to bring down the government; the only resolution, he told congressional sources, would be his appointment as chief minister.
His road trip from Jaipur to Delhi came after police in Rajasthan asked him to answer questions about his alleged role in a BJP scheme to pay Congressmen to quit the party. Pilot told the media that Mr. Gehlot’s attempt to take advantage of the state apparatus against him was the breaking point. Since then, Congress has repeatedly stressed that although it cannot accept any preconditions from it, it would like it to enter into talks to find a solution to the current crisis. Despite Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s phone calls, Mr. Pilot did not move, Congressional sources said.
