Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot took a jibe at the Bhartiya Janta Party on Thursday while saying it should not “punish” his predecessor Vasundhara Raje because of him as he highlighted her positive role in not supporting the motion to topple his government in 2020. He recalled his remarks that were in the praise of the saffron party leader. Earlier in May, Gehlot said that he survived the rebellion of Congress MLAs in 2020 because BJP leaders such as Raje and Kailash Meghwal didn’t support the “conspiracy to topple” his government by using money, reported news agency PTI.
When asked about the alleged sidelining of Vasundhara Raje in BJP, Gehlot at a press conference said that this was an internal matter of the state opposition party and he would not like to comment on it. He said, “But I would like to state that she should not be punished because of me. This would be an injustice to her. I would like to narrate an incident when my government was facing a crisis…When I was Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee president, the then CM Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was abroad in the US for a bypass surgery and his own people were looking to topple his government. As state Congress chief, I had opposed this and said that this was not appropriate.”
Gehlot said that he even told the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and the then governor Bali Ram Bhagat that this would not be correct, reported The Tribune.
He said, “Kailash Meghwal knew about this and when there was a crisis on our government, he said that there is no tradition of toppling governments like this. I keep meeting MLAs aligned to Vasundhara Raje ji and I knew about her remarks and it slipped out of my mouth at a public meeting that she held the same opinion that Kailash Meghwal did.”
After Gehlot’s remarks in May, Raje targeted him by saying that there was no goodwill in his praise but “only malice”.