Ashok Gehlot’s Congress government wins in confidence vote in Rajasthan assembly after a series of political crises as Congress leader Sachin Pilot decided to quit from government earlier. Later, Sachin’s camp returned to the Congress team by maintaining a truce.
During the debate in the Rajasthan assembly on the Congress’s motion for a trust vote, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shanti Kumar Dhariwal, who tabled the proposal for a trust vote, started his speech accusing the BJP of trying to topple the Ashok Gehlot government. “Ashok Gehlot taught the BJP a lesson in Rajasthan. We did not allow a Goa or Madhya Pradesh to happen here,” he said after tabling the motion for a trust vote. He also quipped, without taking names, that “modus operandi” was now “Modi’s operandi”.
After the Congress move, the opposition BJP dropped its plan to ask for a no-confidence motion against the Gehlot government. For Mr Gehlot, however, establishing a majority is a way of securing his government for at least six months.
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot had planned a trust vote for days, even when he was reduced to a wafer-thin majority of 102 following revolt of Sachin Pilot. Winning the vote will give him a six-month reprieve.
The BJP has 72 MLAs and the support of three more. Six MLAs who shifted from Mayawati’s party to the Congress have been asked by the former party to vote against the Ashok Gehlot government.
But the numbers are hardly enough to challenge Mr Gehlot, who enjoys the support of 125 MLAs with the return of Sachin Pilot.
Sources say the BJP’s move is more of a strategy to force a discussion in the assembly to corner the Gehlot government on various issues.
Till now, the BJP had always distanced itself from the Congress crisis and had denied that it would move a no-confidence motion against the state government.
