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Battle royale for Rajasthan CM's post

Syed Firdaus Ashraf in Jaipur

Winning an election -- even in as spectacular a fashion as the Congress did in Rajasthan -- is the easy part. The hardest bit is what comes immediately after -- to wit, figuring out who the next chief minister is going to be.

Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee chief Ashok Gehlot, leader of the Opposition in the previous assembly and repository of Jat aspirations Parasram Maderna, senior Congress leader and Dausa MP Rajesh Pilot, former Union minister Nawal Kishore Sharma, senior Congress leader K Natwar Singh, former state chief minister Shiv Charan Mathur... obviously, there is no stint of aspirants to the post.

And each candidate has something to recommend him. Gehlot, for instance, has the cachet of being the man who led the party to a spectacular performance, earlier this year in the general election, when the Congress won 18 out of 25 seats in the state, and following up with a record-breaking win in the assembly election just ended.

The catch, though, is that Gehlot is seen as a bit of a johnny come lately. As sections of Congress workers in the state point out, Gehlot was home minister in the Shiv Charan Mathur government in 1990, which makes him considerably junior to some of the other aspirants. This, a section of the party feels, will make the more senior party leaders in the state unwilling to accept his leadership.

"You cannot expect Nawal Kishore Sharma and Shiv Charan Mathur to be content with being ordinary ministers under Gehlot," a Congress source pointed out.

Mathur in fact has fired the first salvo by arguing that no MP should become chief minister of the state -- a direct hit at Gehlot's aspirations, as the PCC chief represents the Jodhpur parliamentary constituency.

Interestingly, Mathur kills three birds with that one stone, since Pilot and Natwar Singh, two of the other aspirants, are also members of Parliament.

Gehlot side-stepped Mathur's salvo in time-honoured fashion, remarking: "It is up to the party high command, to our president Sonia Gandhi and to the Congress Legislature Party to decide who the next chief minister of Rajasthan will be."

The rush of aspirants for the prime post leaves the PCC chief unfazed. "We are actually fortunate that there are so many aspirants for the chief minister's post," Gehlot said. This shows that unlike the BJP, which has only one Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, we don't have a leadership crisis."

Going for Gehlot is the fact that he was almost singularly responsible for ticket distribution in the state. His supremacy irked the rival faction, resulting in as many as 46 rebel candidates going up against the official Congress nominees.

This was expected to hurt the party at the hustings, but on the contrary, the Congress recorded the largest ever win in the state's electoral history. One up for Gehlot there, since his choice of candidates stood vindicated and, at the same time, the rival faction's rebellion proved completely futile.

But Gehlot also has several strikes against him -- the first and most important being the caste factor. The Jats form an important power bloc in the state, candidates from that community having contested 37 seats and won 31 in the election just ended -- and the two senior community leaders, Parasram Maderna and former Union minister Sis Ram Ola have buried their personal differences and united to oppose Gehlot's candidacy.

True, Sis Ram Ola himself won the 1998 general election from Jhunjunu not as a Congress candidate, but as an Independent. And his son Brijendra Ola, the party candidate for the Jhunjunu assembly seat, has lost to Congress rebel Sumitra Singh, which would seem to put a damper on Ola's clout.

The same though cannot be said for the other Jat leader -- Parasram Maderna being seen as perhaps the leader most equal to Gehlot in terms of clout, with the added plus that he enjoys the full backing of the powerful Jat lobby.

The two have a bit of a history. Maderna was the party chief in 1993, when the Congress managed a mere 76 out of 200 seats in the state assembly. Following this debacle, he was replaced as PCC chief by Gehlot.

Among the rank and file, too, Maderna comes off second best -- the feeling being that the Jat leader tends to hang out with his own crowd, while Gehlot is the kind of leader who mingles easily with workers at all levels, and stays close to the roots.

The joker, for Gehlot, could be Sonia Gandhi. Gehlot had opposed Sharad Pawar's bid to become elected party president, and ensured that all but two votes from Rajasthan went to Pawar's then rival Sitaram Kesri. This has made, for Gehlot, a powerful enemy in Pawar -- but given the political equation within the Congress, it has also made for Gehlot a well-wisher in Sonia Gandhi, on the "my enemy's enemy is my friend" principle.

Shiv Charan Mathur's best hope is to emerge the compromise candidate, in the event of a Gehlot versus Maderna faceoff for the top slot.

A dark horse of sorts is former Union minister Nawal Kishore Sharma. He has the cachet of being close to the Gandhis and, further, was CWC member during the Kesri regime. The minus point chalked against his name could be that he is getting on in years, and not up to the arduous job any longer.

Natwar Singh, for his part, will be banking on the fact that the party high command -- read Sonia Gandhi -- reposes a lot of confidence in him. It was Singh who was asked to lead the Congress attack on the BJP in Parliament, after the nuclear tests of May 11 and 13. Singh responded with a fiery speech, and moved higher in the estimation of the high command as a result.

Trouble is, though, that Natwar Singh was unwell in the lead up to the assembly election -- reportedly suffering from an ailing heart. And besides, he is none too popular with party workers in the state, being seen as some kind of elite type based in Delhi, and out of tune with ground realities in the state.

So that is pretty much how it stands for now: Gehlot, the man of the moment, squaring up to Maderna, the Jat leader. Shiv Charan Mathur standing by, hoping the two contenders will knock each other out and he will step in as the compromise candidate. Ailing 'dark horses' in Natwar Singh and Nawal Kishore Sharma. And Rajesh Pilot -- powerful at the Centre, but as analysts point out, Sonia Gandhi would probably prefer to keep him there, under her eye, rather than building up a power base in Rajasthan.

The task of refereeing the contest falls on the four observers from New Delhi, now in Jaipur -- Ghulam Nabi Azad, the party functionary given overall charge of orchestrating the election campaign in Rajasthan, Madhavrao Scindia the CWC member in charge of the state, Mohsina Kidwai and R L Bhatia.

They will preside over the meeting of the newly elected MLAs on Monday. And try and bring about a measure of unanimity in favour of one or the other candidate.

"We don't anticipate any problems," says Azad, "we are sure a suitable candidate will be elected."

And failing that, the ball will land in the 'high command's' court...

EARLIER REPORT/INTERVIEWS:
'The next CM must not be chosen on a caste basis'
Jats clamour for CM's post if Congress wins Rajasthan
'If given a chance, I am sure I will prove to be competent for the job'

Assembly Election '98

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