Will sweep panchayat election too: Sachin Pilot

“We have to be on top of our game. Satta ki charbi nahin chadhni chahiye (power should not make us lazy),” Rajasthan’s deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot told ET as the Congress government completes its first year in office.
The Ashok Gehlot-led government appears to have consolidated its position since being sworn in on December 17 last year, despite its major promises such as farm loan waiver and unemployment allowance still being works in progress. In a coup of sorts, Gehlot got all six BSP MLAs to join his party in September, increasing the effective strength of the Congress to 106 in the 200-member assembly. A majority of the 13 independents also support the Congress in the state.

The Lok Sabha election was a setback to the Congress in Rajasthan, with the BJP cashing in on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal and again winning all 25 seats, including Gehlot’s stronghold of Jodhpur where his son lost the poll. But a moribund state BJP unit has not been able to challenge the Congress much since.

“Despite the Lok Sabha setback, our organisation was strong in the grassroots. Hence, we won three-fourths of the seats in the urban municipal polls recently despite the BJP claiming urban centres as its strongholds. The panchayat polls are coming up and we expect similar results,” said Pilot.

A big reason for the BJP unit struggling in the state is that it is said to be looking to promote a new state of leaders since Vasundhara Raje bowed out of power. “BJP in the last one year has been absent on the ground. Their leaders are limited to giving statements on social media. BJP in Rajasthan has its internal battles to deal with and leadership issues to sort out,” said Pilot.

However, the BJP’s Gulab Chand Kataria, the leader of the opposition, said the BJP has left the government tongue-tied on issues in the assembly. “Farmers and the youth are unhappy with this government. They have failed to deliver on farm loan waiver and the Rs 3,000 monthly unemployment allowance,” he told ET.

In Lok Sabha last week, the Centre had said that while short-term loans of 1.989 million small farmers worth Rs 7,361 crore from cooperative banks had been waived in Rajasthan. Medium and long-term loans, however, had been waived only for 19,800 farmers worth Rs 229 crore, while the amount to be waived was Rs 18,000 crore, it said. “There are 25 lakh unemployed youth. Not even 50,000 of them have got the allowance so far,” said Kataria.

While Pilot admitted that “more efforts are needed to completely fulfil the commitment” made by Congress, Kataria accused the Congress of reneging on its promise. “They no longer want to waive farm loans taken from scheduled banks. Rahul Gandhi had said all farm loans will be waived in 10 days. He also promised unemployment allowance for all – but now, they want to limit it to youngsters registered with employment exchanges,” he said.

Kataria also said that there had been a 44% overall increase in crimes and a 65% increase in crimes against women in the state and that no major investments had come in. “All we hear from the CM is the shortage of funds… they have stopped all works started by us,” he said.

Gehlot still seems to have strengthened his position, including by curbing the internal challenge posed by Pilot even as the duo keeps exchanging verbal barbs and there are murmurs in Jaipur on how ministers owing allegiance to Pilot have not got their due. Meanwhile, Gehlot is set to launch a campaign from December 17 to highlight the achievements of his government.