Down, almost out

The final result, Gehlot is neither the leader of the opposition nor is he party chief. Further he has clarified that he will not make any move closer to the center of power at the AICC headquarters and neither will he stake a claim for a Lok Sabha ticket. Which for the time being makes him ‘practically a nobody’.

‘‘I will continue to serve the people of Rajasthan,’’ he says modestly, shrugging his shoulders on the question of being left out in the cold. ‘‘What can I say,’’ he asks.

Gehlot might choose his words carefully, but his loyalists are more vocal about their views. ‘‘Look at what the BJP does with its leaders,’’ says Sayam Lodha, a Gehlot loyalist and one of the few Congress MLAs who managed to win a second time round. ‘‘Rajnath Singh lost in Uttar Pradesh and was given a berth in the centre, Bhairon Singh Shekawat was made leader of the opposition even after the BJP’s humiliating defeat in 1989 and then became the vice-president of the country. In Maharasthra, Gopinath Munde was not abandoned by the party.’’

‘‘How can the party suddenly let go of a leadership it has nurtured for over 20 years,’’ says Lodha. ‘‘Winning and losing are part of politics and it is never entirely one man’s fault.’’ But many believe what happened to Gehlot would happen to anyone in the Congress. ‘‘In this party, being a leader is not easy,’’ confesses a party worker. ‘‘It is a party of nobodies.’’

Political observers add that instead of a real evaluation for the reasons for defeat, Congressmen have found a scapegoat in Gehlot. The poster boy has become everyone’s favourite whipping boy.

And he is the one person who is still trying to get to the bottom of the defeat. By his own admission, since December 4, when the ‘‘results no one was expecting were announced’’ Gehlot has been looking for answers. A month later, he is still saying what he said on the first day. ‘‘There is no one reason. If you put together a hundred odd factors then you get a vague picture of why we lost,’’ Gehlot says, adding in the same breath that people who hold him solely responsible are not entirely wrong.

Sitting in his residence, two houses down the street from the official Chief Minister’s residence, Gehlot still draws a lot of crowds. He spends an average five to six hours everyday meeting people, ‘‘consoling them’’, telling them that the defeat should not bog them down and recounting one of his favourite anecdotes.

‘‘I tell this story to everyone,’’ he begins. ‘‘I lost a school election by four votes, a university election by 400 and then the real thing by 4000. But ever since I have only won. Defeat is never pleasant but one has to move on.’’ For him the biggest consolation is that the ‘‘people of Rajasthan didn’t really celebrate his defeat’’. Everything else is just ‘‘dirty politics’’.