At the time when Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot is celebrating his populist budget, the party's high command has acted on one of his close aides Mahesh Joshi who has resigned from the post of Chief Whip.
The in-charge of the Rajasthan Congress Sukhjindar Singh Randhawa has clarified that the incident of holding a parallel meeting of Congress legislators on September 25th is one of the reasons behind Mahesh Joshi’s resignation from the post of Chief Whip of the Congress Legislature Party in the Assembly.
Talking to the media in Jaipur on Saturday, Randhawa said,"Mahesh Joshi's resignation from the post of Chief Whip is a result of the incident of September 25th and the principal of the party of ‘one-post-one-person’ as he is a cabinet minister also."
The clarification made by Randhwa has been taken as politically significant as it is hinting that the party is serious about the displeasure expressed by the dissident leader Sachin Pilot over the "unprecedented delay" in the decision on the matter of holding a parallel meeting of Congress MLAs on September 25th last year as the action of high command has come just after his interview regarding this.
Mahesh Joshi was one of the three leaders who were given show cause notices by the party's high command in the incident of calling a parallel Congress legislators meeting of Gehlot loyalists. The other two leaders are the parliamentary affairs minister Shanti Dhariwal and the chairman of Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation (RTDC) Dharmendra Rathore.
On the action of the other two leaders, Randhawa said, "the action has to be taken by the high command. I have done what I was asked to do."
Notably, Sachin Pilot in an interview on Wednesday said that the All India Congress Committee (AICC) disciplinary committee under A.K. Antony, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and the leadership, can best answer why there had been an "unprecedented delay" in a decision on the matter of holding a parallel meeting of Congress MLAs.
"The legislative party (CLP) meeting was called on September 25 by the Chief Minister [Ashok Gehlot] in Jaipur; that meeting did not take place. The central observers, Ajay Maken, and Kharge were there. Whatever would have happened in the meeting is a separate issue, agreement, or disagreement, but the meeting was not allowed to take place, The people who were responsible for not having that meeting and having a parallel gathering were served notices of prima facie indiscipline," said Pilot in the interview.
