THE WAR OF WORDS AND DEEDS

PILOT'S MEETINGS HAVE BEEN THOUGHTFULLY SET UP, GOING BEYOND HIS NARROW GUJJAR SOCIAL BASE

- Rohit Parihar

After the brief enforced truce of the days when Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra was passing through the desert state, the Rajasthan Congress is back to form-if anything, the war drums are louder than before, with former deputy CM Sachin Pilot and Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot taking fairly unvarnished jibes at each other in public.

In fact, very public. The Pilot camp took out five big rallies across the state-four billed as kisan sammelans, while the last was an inaugural function at Jaipur's Maharaja College-between January 16 and 20 where he was barely short of direct attacks as he let loose jibes on Gehlot for, among other things, not acting on corruption charges against his predecessor Vasundhara Raje. On the repeated question paper leaks in recruitment exams during this government's tenure, Pilot wondered if a "magician" had anything to do with it-a less-than-subtle allusion to the CM's old family skill (his father was a practising magician). The former deputy CM was also peeved by Gehlot's use of derogatory epithets such as "nikamma" (useless) and "gaddar" (traitor) for him. Gehlot, in fact, loses no opportunity to stress on the last descriptor after Pilot's failed coup attempt in 2020-this time, he was seen on video saying "a big Corona entered our party".