Gehlot vs Pilot reaches top court: SC hearing on Speaker's plea today

The Supreme Court (SC) will hear on Thursday a plea by Rajasthan Speaker C P Joshi against the high court order, restraining him from any action against 19 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs), including Sachin Pilot, who decided not to attend a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party and rebelled against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot.

The central issue is: Can a Speaker have jurisdiction over the actions of MLAs outside the Legislative Assembly and when the Assembly is not in session?

Joshi said he had decided to go to the SC to avert a “constitutional crisis” and a confrontation with the judiciary on his powers. Pilot and his MLAs have also filed a petition asking to be heard before the court takes a decision on the Speaker’s request. “The Speaker has the right to disqualify MLAs. No one can interfere in the Speaker’s decision,” said Joshi at a press conference in Jaipur before filing the plaint, adding that whatever judgment the court has given, “I have respected till now. However, does this respect and acceptance mean one authority overlaps the role of the other?”

He will be represented in SC by Kapil Sibal, a Congress Member of Parliament and senior SC advocate.

The nub of the problem is Joshi’s announcement that 18 MLAs, led by former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Pilot, stood up in revolt against Gehlot. Gehlot himself confessed that he and Pilot had not spoken for the past 18 months and Pilot had been nothing but trouble from the word go.

Initially, the high command went along with Gehlot, and Pilot was also removed from his position as chief of the state party. But later Pilot was said to be in touch with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, though Rahul Gandhi, rather elliptically, told a meeting of the National Students’ Union of India (the Congress’s student wing) that those who wanted to leave the Congress could do so, hinting at the recent departure of Jyotiraditya Scindia and Pilot’s rebellion.

What the Pilot camp wants is justice.

The MLAs argue that they had many grouses against Gehlot’s cronyism. The final straw was Gehlot’s action of setting the Rajasthan Police on Pilot and his supporters on the charge that they were conspiring against the government by conspiring with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Gehlot’s camp says Pilot and his acolytes brought very little to the table politically and relations deteriorated so badly that Gehlot was determined to drive Pilot and others out of the Congress, even if it meant going through a dangerous floor test.

So far no floor test is scheduled and Pilot with the BJP has just under 100 MLAs, while Gehlot with alliance partners has just over 100 MLAs in the 200-member Assembly.

Meanwhile, the central BJP is piling on the pressure on Rajasthan. The Enforcement Directorate conducted raids at a company named Anupam Krishi in Jodhpur owned by Agrasen Gehlot, brother of Ashok Gehlot. Customs department has prosecuted and levied a penalty of Rs 7 crore on the company. Meanwhile, Pilot was on another mission: to clear his name of charges of bribery. On Wednesday, he lodged a case against Congress MLA Girraj Singh Malinga who had alleged that Pilot offered him Rs 35 crore to cross-vote in the Rajya Sabha polls. 

Pilot’s notice demands a sum of Rs 1 and a written apology before the press for issuing “false and frivolous allegation” within seven days. It is unlikely that any test on the floor of the Assembly will be undertaken before Monday or till the SC has issued its orders on Joshi’s plea. Both sides are now ranged against each other and under pressure to guard their flanks from further attrition.