Cong leaders in Rajasthan must be prepared to sacrifice personal ambition, says Margaret Alva
Sep 26, 2022
New Delhi [India], September 26 : Former Rajasthan Governor and veteran Congress leader Margaret Alva on Monday expressed her disappointment over the ongoing political crisis in the state and said that the senior leaders of Congress "must" be prepared to sacrifice "personal ambition".
Alva said that there is a need for "selfless sacrifice" in the party, while stating that Rahul Gandhi has shown what the party needs to do.
"The events unfolding in #Rajasthan are deeply disappointing, unfortunate & unnecessary. Senior leaders in the state must be prepared to sacrifice personal ambition & take their cue from @RahulGandhi who has shown what the Congress needs the most right now is selfless service," Alva tweeted.
This comes a day after a legislative party meeting was scheduled on Sunday evening at the residence of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot in the presence of observers for the state which included Mallikarjun Kharge and Ajay Maken, and was attended by Sachin Pilot and his camp MLAs. However, the Gehlot loyalists had held a meeting with Cabinet Minister Shanti Dhariwal at his residence, following which over 90 MLAs had submitted their resignations to Speaker CP Joshi.
Congress leader and observer for Rajasthan, Ajay Maken on Monday dubbed the "unofficial" meeting conducted by state minister Shanti Dhariwal with the rebel MLAs of the Ashok Gehlot camp an "indisciplined move", while also stating that the party has never allowed "conditional resolutions" to take place, as against the demands by the group.
Maken, who will return to Delhi today after the Gehlot camp MLAs refused to meet the observers, said that Shanti Dhariwal, Mahesh Joshi and Pratap Singh met them as the representatives of the MLAs and put three conditions which also included not holding a one-on-one meeting with the observers.
"The meeting of the CLP was scheduled with the approval of the Chief Minister at his residence. For those MLAs who did not turn up, we had been saying that we are here to hear everybody's issues. We will listen to their issues one-to-one. Whatever you will say will be conveyed in Delhi. Shanti Dhariwal, Mahesh Hoshi and Pratap Singh came to us as their representatives. They put forward three conditions," Maken told media persons here.
He detailed the demands put forward by the Rajasthan rebel Congress leaders.
"One was to announce the implementation of the resolution of handing over the responsibility (to appoint CM) to the Congress President after October 19; we said it'll be a conflict of interest. If CM Ashok Gehlot becomes Congress chief after October 19, he can't empower himself over his own resolution. 2nd condition- they wanted to come in groups when we said that we shall talk to everyone individually," he said.
"We said that it has always been the Congress' tradition that we hold talks one-on-one so that the MLAs can speak their mind without any pressure. The third condition was that the CM should be from the 102 MLAs who are loyal to CM Ashok Gehlot, not Sachin Pilot or his group. We said that their exact sentiments will be conveyed to the Congress chief, who will take the decision after talking to CM Ashok Gehlot and everyone else. But they kept on insisting that all three points should be a part of the resolution and that the resolution should be based on these conditions. Congress has never allowed conditional resolutions to take place in 75 years of its history," he said.
"We will present the report to Sonia Gandhi. We waited for more MLAs to come, but they didn't. Mallikarjun Kharge & I are going to Delhi to submit our report to the Congress chief. No one has any idea about the number and identities of the MLAs who resigned or not," the Congress leader added.