India Tomorrow
JAIPUR/NEW DELHI, JULY 13—Rajasthan Congress MLAs loyal to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot were sent to the Fairmont Hotel on the Delhi-Jaipur highway after the party passed a resolution demanding to punish those indulging in “anti-party” activities.
The MLAs were sent to the hotel after the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting at CM’s residence. Over 100 MLAs attended the meet.
The step has been taken to ensure that the dissident party MLAs led by deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot or BJP leaders are not able to contact them for poaching.
Meanwhile, Income Tax sleuths on Monday conducted raids at the Fairmont hotel.
Four buses were parked outside the Chief Minister’s residence which took the MLAs to the hotel as part of the resort politics to keep the Gehlot camp’s flock safe amid the rising crisis posed by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s sulking deputy Sachin Pilot who declared on Sunday that the Gehlot government is in a minority.
However, brushing aside Pilot’s claims, Gehlot showed majority numbers and flashed a victory symbol as over 100 MLAs stood with him.
The party also passed resolution against the BJP on Monday after the CLP meeting and said that it strongly condemns “attempts to kill democracy”.
It said that people behind anti-party activities should be punished as it criticised any kind of “undemocratic act” which maligns the party’ image.
Earlier, a whip was issued for all MLAs to attend the meeting, however, Pilot and his flock of 18 MLAs were missing from the meeting. This is despite the fact Sachin Pilot had claimed support of 30 MLAs.
Political analysts say that the development would affect the politics of Sachin pilot as he failed to deliver any serious blow and pull down the Gehlot government as was done by Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh who brought down the Kamal Nath government by engineering defection among party MLAs.
-With Inputs from IANS
