Aam Aadmi Party leader and Rajasthan election in-charge Vinay Mishra on Thursday weighed in on the continuing power tussle between Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and his former deputy, Sachin Pilot, saying the message was clear for the young Congress leader after the party rushed to defend Gehlot.
“When Sachin Pilot raised a question on Ashok Gehlot, AICC held a press conference in defence of Gehlot. Sachin Pilot, the message for you is very clear. After all this what is the compulsion that you have to live with such humiliation?” Mishra said in a post on Twitter, offering his brief analysis of Wednesday’s turn of events after Pilot took a swipe at Gehlot. Mishra represents Dwarka in the Delhi assembly,
Sachin Pilot told reporters on Wednesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s praise of Ashok Gehlot at a tribal event in Banswara was an “interesting” development and one which the party shouldn’t take lightly.
“The PM praised the chief minister and this is an interesting development because the prime minister had praised Ghulam Nabi Azad in the same manner in the House in Parliament. And we all have seen what circumstances were created after that,” he told reporters on Wednesday morning. The reference was to Azad quitting the Congress and later forming his own party.
On reports that Gehlot too reciprocated PM Modi’s gesture when he spoke about the respect that PM Modi commands during his trips abroad, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate told a media briefing that Gehlot remarks didn’t praise the PM but “showed a mirror”.
“If I tell the person sitting next to me that your respect is not from you, your respect is because you come from a country which is Gandhi ji’s country, Nehru ji’s country, Ambedkar ji’s country, where democracy is strong, I think this would be a matter of insult. I don’t know who sees respect in this,” Shrinate said.
To be sure, Shrinate did not speak about Pilot’s remarks and underlined that both Gehlot and Pilot have reiterated time and again that everyone has to work together so that the Congress government returns to power in Rajasthan.
Congress spokesperson RC Choudhary trashed Mishra’s analysis, saying that AAP didn’t really have an agenda in Rajasthan because of the work that the Congress government had done after coming to power in the state.
