Ashok Gehlot takes oath as Rajasthan chief minister, Sachin Pilot as deputy

Veteran Congress leader Ashok Gehlot took the oath as the chief minister of Rajasthan for the third time on Monday at the historic Albert Hall in state capital Jaipur.

And Sachin Pilot took oath as the deputy chief minister after Congress president Rahul Gandhi brokered peace between Gehlot and him on Friday after two days of hectic consultations in New Delhi.

They were administered the oath of office by governor Kalyan Singh.

Gandhi attended the oath-taking ceremony of the Congress chief minister and a number of opposition leaders were also present at the ceremony, which is being seen as a show of unity ahead of the general election next year.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati gave the event a miss and will not attend the swearing-in ceremonies of the other two Congress chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh later in the day.

Mayawati and Yadav are, however, supporting the new Congress governments in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. West Bengal chief minister Banerjee has sent a representative, unlike the other two leaders from Uttar Pradesh.

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Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, his Karnataka counterpart HD Kumaraswamy, Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar, All India Trinamool Congress leader Dinesh Trivedi, Janata Dal (Secular) president HD Deve Gowda, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah, Loktantrik Janta Dal chief Sharad Yadav, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam president MK Stalin and leader Kanimozhi also attended.

The delay in naming the next chief minister, after it became clear last Tuesday that the Congress had wrested back the state from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), stemmed from the protests by supporters of Pilot, 41, to the candidacy of Gehlot.

The 67-year-old Gehlot has been a member of Parliament from Jodhpur five times and represented Sardarpura in the state assembly an equal number of times. Pilot represented Dausa and Ajmer in the Lok Sabha in 2004 and 2009 respectively. He fought the recently-concluded assembly election for the first time.

Mohan Lal Sukhadia and Haridev Joshi of the Congress and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat of the BJP, apart from Gehlot, are only other leaders so far to hold the chief minister’s post three times in the western state.

Gehlot is known for his political acumen and organisational skills and Pilot is credited with strengthening the party at the grassroots level.

Gehlot was brought to the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in April 2017 as general secretary in-charge of Gujarat and took charge of organisation and training in March this year, replacing another veteran, Janardan Dwivedi.

Pilot took over as the Rajasthan Congress chief in January 2014, nearly a month after the party was decimated in the assembly elections in which it managed to win just 21 of the 200 seats in the assembly.

The poor show continued in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as the Congress failed to open its account while the BJP won all 25 seats. The Congress wrested power from the BJP in the recently-concluded assembly elections, winning 99 seats, one short of a majority. The BJP won 73.

The Congress has the support of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) with six legislators and also some independents.

And, two other Congress governments will also take over from the BJP in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Kamal Nath will be sworn in as Madhya Pradesh CM in Bhopal at 1.30pm and Bhupesh Baghel will take oath as Chhattisgarh CM in Raipur at 5pm.

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