The crisis surfaced on Friday when the Rajasthan Police issued notices to Gehlot, Pilot and the government chief whip, seeking time from them to record their statements over an alleged bid to destabilise the state's Congress government.
"This time we want to prepare the organisation very strongly. The workers should get respect, everyone's participation is important, there should be balance in power, and we should move forward taking all sections of the society along," Pilot told reporters after hour-long meeting with Sonia Gandhi.
The discussion between the former deputy chief minister and the Gandhi siblings comes days after the dramatic developments in Punjab where the Congress replaced Amarinder Singh as chief minister and appointed Charanjit Singh Channi, a Dalit leader, to the top post of the state.
Rahul Gandhi will lead Congress from the front in the Lok Sabha as well as the assembly polls this year, Union Minister Sachin Pilot said, skirting the question whether he would be projected as Prime Ministerial candidate to take on Narendra Modi.
Sachin Pilot, Parliamentarian from Dausa, Rajasthan and a prominent member of the Congress' young brigade, draws inspiration from his father, late Rajesh Pilot, as well as party chief Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul."Of course, the star campaigners in the coming Lok Sabha elections would be Sonia Gandhi, Rahulji and our Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, who has been making rapid progress after his heart surgery. Rahulji is one of the most acceptable politicians around,"he said
Union Minister of State for Communications and Technology Sachin Pilot on Friday charged the National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar with misuse of central funds worth over Rs 11 crore under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and other flagship programmes for the poor.
The Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government will have a total of 30 ministers, including 18 who had resigned earlier.
Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Telecommunications and Information Technology, has predicted that, thanks to the mobile technology boom, telephone calls and related charges in India would soon be free. Pilot said that in such a scenario, telecom companies would have to think of novel ways to make money, with services such as data transfer to survive and stay competitive.
Pilot noted that 'the kind of damage that entities and groups and people can cause through the Internet and through the cyber-world is somehow disproportionate to their conventional capacities'.
The 19 MLAs were sent notices Tuesday by the Speaker after the Congress complained that they had defied a party whip to attend two Congress Legislature Party meetings.
The division bench completed the hearing of arguments and said it will pronounce its order on Friday, requesting the Speaker too to extend his deadline for accepting the MLAs replies to the notices. The notices had followed a Congress complaint that the 19 MLAs should be disqualified from the assembly for defying a party whip.
Gehlot said he has the proof that horse trading was being committed to topple his government.
Giriraj Singh Malinga said he had alerted Gehlot ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls that a conspiracy was going on to topple his government.
The government is committed to connecting every single panchayat in the country with high-speed Internet in two years, Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot said.
After chairing an emergency meeting with senior officials to discuss the situation, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said that heli services on the Char Dham route will remain suspended for two days, as the weather is bad and the safety of the passengers is the government's top priority.
Sources said the leadership of the government going forward, if Gehlot is elected as party chief, is likely to be on the meeting agenda.
After Congress' observer to the state K C Venugopal made the announcement at a media briefing in New Delhi.
Pilot had claimed that the Ashok Gehlot government was in minority and more than 30 Congress and some independent legislators have pledged support to him.
The man who could well have been a high-level corporate may have to content himself being deputy chief minister. But other challenges await.
Pilot said he has worked hard for bringing the Congress to power in Rajasthan and hoped the party would fulfil its promises made to the people.
'I don't want to give any headline to the media as at present my focus is on the Bharat Jodo Yatra'
The government on Thursday said it will set up a committee to look into the allegations that US retail giant Walmart indulged in lobbying activities in India to gain entry in the country's market.
Last week, the 34-year old Deora, a two-time Congress MP from South Mumbai, had taken charge as Minister of State for IT and Communications.
'...for success like the BJP.' 'The BJP's work for the next election begins the day one election ends.'
The MLAs supporting Pilot cannot stand the repeated undermining of Pilot, also the state PCC chief, by the Gehlot camp and the letter by the police's special operations group sent to the deputy chief minister was to "humiliate him", sources said.
Government says that it is trying to improve business environment and any delay in this regard is mostly due to state-level approvals.
'Every Congressman in Rajasthan is in Ashok Gehlot's pocket.'
Pilot said he will be taking 'appropriate and strictest possible legal action' against the MLA who 'was made to' level these accusations. Congress MLA Giriraj Singh Malinga alleged that Pilot had offered him money to join the BJP.
Several top Congress leaders including party general secretary organisation K C Venugopal, Sachin Pilot, Randeep Surjewala and Shashi Tharoor, wished the former party chief on her birthday.
The Congress on Saturday named 22 more candidates for the Rajasthan assembly polls and denied ticket to Public Health Engineering Department Minister Mahesh Joshi from his Hawa Mahal constituency in Jaipur.
Two other Rajasthan ministers Vishvendra Singh and Ramesh Meena were also sacked from the state cabinet after a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party, its second in the last two days. The meeting was billed as a 'second chance' for Pilot, who had turned down appeals from the party's top leadership -- including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi -- to return to the fold.
Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party of indulging in "shout and scream" practices to disrupt Parliament, Union Minister Sachin Pilot has said government is more than willing to "walk the half way" to debate issues raised by the opposition.
The political drama in Rajasthan over leadership change continued on Monday with MLAs loyal to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot remaining non-committal on holding a meeting with Congress observers, who are likely to return to Delhi to apprise the high command about the developments.
The Shiv Sena accused Jyotiraditya Scindia of working hard to see that Pilot quits the Congress.
Ramesh Meena, who was among those BSP legislators who made the switch to Congress, said: "The chief minister should honestly tell how much money was paid to us when we joined Congress and left the the BSP in the last Congress government."
Union Minister of State Kailash Chaudhary was among the first to cast his vote, exercising his franchise in Balotra.
'No indiscipline will be tolerated but I am hopeful that Pilot will turn up for the meeting
The estimated costs of these weddings start from Rs 100 crore and go up to Rs 700 crore.
"Rajasthan is the only state where no demand was raised to change the PCC president in seven years. We knew that nothing is happening here. We knew he is 'nikamma' (worthless) and 'nakara' (idle), still we did not question this in the interest of the party," Gehlot told reporters.
The coming weeks will be a tightrope walk for Gehlot who has 100 loyalists MLAs waiting to be rewarded on one side and the dissidents who wanted to be rehabilitated on the other, observes Prakash Bhandari.
