Congress leader and former deputy chief minister Rajasthan Sachin Pilot, who returned to the Congress fold after a month-long tussle with CM Ashok Gehlot, blasted at India Today journalist Rajdeep Sardesai for insinuating that his rebellion was bankrolled by the BJP.
In an interview with Rajdeep Sardesai after his dramatic return to Congress, the former deputy CM of Rajasthan, Sachin Pilot asserted that he along with the other 18 MLAs in Rajasthan, who had rebelled against CM Gehlot had paid their legal expenses and other expenditures out of their own pocket.
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However, Rajdeep interjected him, saying that there is a prevailing narrative that the BJP was sponsoring the rebelling MLAs to topple the Congress government in Rajasthan. To this Sachin responded, “No, It is very easy to allege. I know the numbers better than you do Rajdeep. I have worked to make those numbers. I know each and every MLA in our party and otherwise.”
Pilot further added that the day he had first come to Delhi, he did not make any statement of leaving the Congress party, and which he had helped forming government in Rajasthan. He also added that neither his MLAs nor him spoke anything against the Congress party, its leadership or the Rajasthan government.
“The issue was about certain things that were happening within the government and the leadership style of the chief minister, and I don’t think it is illegal, immoral, anti-national or anti-party to raise our grievances about what we thought was wrong,” Pilot said.
Rajdeep also asserted that the revolt waged by Sachin Pilot and the MLAs loyal to him had come “unstuck” and that they had to “lick their wounds” and come back to Congress. Pilot scoffed at the Rajdeep’s description of the crisis saying, “We have all been the part of the Congress party and we were within our rights to raise issues we thought were important for the government we have to built to work for 5 years…I have maintained from the first day that we were in Congress, we are with the Congress party. It is the government which I have helped in making this government. Why would I wish ill for the government?”
After a month-long political tussle Sachin Pilot returns to Congress
The political turmoil in Rajasthan has seemingly seems to have come to an end with senior leader of the Congress party, Sachin Pilot, bending the knee before the Chief Minister of the state Ashok Gehlot. The suspended Deputy CM accepted Gehlot as his leader.
The Congress party had said in a statement earlier, “Sachin Pilot has met former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and expressed his grievances in detail. They have had a frank, open and conclusive discussion. Sachin Pilot has committed to working in the interest of the Congress party and the Congress government in Rajasthan.”
