Ashok Gehlot’s troubleshooter, can Mahesh Joshi find his way out again?

Including Joshi, 11 leaders close to Gehlot – then, or now – are facing investigation by various Central agencies, including Gehlot’s brother Agrasain Gehlot and his son Vaibhav, Congress state president Govind Singh Dotasra, Gehlot’s former Officer on Special Duty (OSD) Lokesh Sharma, former ministers Rajendra Yadav, Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, Udailal Anjana, ex-MLA Om Prakash Hudla, and Gehlot’s aides Dharmendra Rathore and Rajiv Arora.

Among them, while Lokesh Sharma has turned approver, Rajendra Yadav has joined the BJP.

Joshi’s rise

Joshi started out in politics as a student leader. In 1979-80, he was the president of the Rajasthan University Students’ Union. By 1988, he had become the state president of the Congress Seva Dal, and held the post for three years. In 1990, he contested from the Hawa Mahal Assembly seat as a Congress candidate but lost to the BJP’s Bhanwar Lal Sharma. By the late 1990s, he had become a Congress spokesperson.

Joshi fought elections again only in 1998, when he contested from Jaipur’s Kishanpole Assembly seat and went on to win. Thanks to his organizational skills, he was made the Deputy Chief Whip in the first Ashok Gehlot government (1998-2003).

However, Joshi suffered a setback in the 2003 Assembly elections, losing the Kishanpole seat by just 718 votes, after which he skipped the 2008 polls.

In 2009, the Congress fielded him from the Jaipur Lok Sabha seat, and a win took him to the Centre. However, Joshi’s mixed luck with elections continued and in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he lost from Jaipur.

By 2018, he again turned towards the Assembly, contesting from Hawa Mahal, and becoming an MLA for the second time.

In his third tenure in power (2018-2023), Gehlot chose Joshi as his Chief Whip, a nod to both his organizational strengths and the need to balance caste equations.

The 2020 political crisis

In one of the biggest challenges to Gehlot in his nearly four-decade-long political career, his Deputy CM Sachin Pilot mounted a rebellion against him in mid-2020. Pilot, who believed he deserved the CM’s post as he had led the Congress when it returned to power in 2018, had been sulking for long.

After Pilot and the 18 Congress MLAs with him parked themselves in separate hotels, Joshi, along with other members of Gehlot’s inner circle, helped the CM pull through, outwitting those backing Pilot.

Following a leak of audio clips purportedly showing the Pilot camp’s attempt to topple the Gehlot government with the help of the BJP, Joshi registered the FIRs in this regard with the Special Operations Group (SOG) alleging sedition and criminal conspiracy.

As the Chief Whip, Joshi also filed a petition before then Assembly Speaker C P Joshi to disqualify the 19 Pilot camp MLAs, who in turn moved the High Court. Again, Joshi pursued the case in the High Court.

Eventually, the Gehlot camp prevailed and Pilot suffered a humiliating defeat.

In early 2021, then Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat lodged an FIR against Gehlot’s then OSD Lokesh Sharma for allegedly tapping his phone during Pilot’s rebellion. Joshi too was summoned in the case, but did not appear, citing several reasons.

His ministerial stint

For all his troubles, Gehlot inducted Joshi as a Cabinet minister and gave him the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) in November 2021.

In June 2022, Joshi was again in the spotlight when he submitted a complaint to the Anti-Corruption Bureau to “initiate” an inquiry into alleged attempts at horsetrading before the Rajya Sabha polls.

This period was marked by open hostility between Joshi and Union minister Shekhawat, starting with the BJP leader being made an accused in the 2020 rebellion against the Gehlot government, on a complaint by Joshi. In April 2022, Joshi and Shekhawat had a public spat over the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project.

In September 2022, Gehlot again faced a threat to his chair – and again Joshi was among the troubleshooters. After the party high command called a Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting to apparently hand over the reins of the state to Pilot, Joshi and others stayed away in an unprecedented move, and separately submitted resignations of 81 MLAs to Speaker C P Joshi.

Subsequently, Joshi and others were issued a show cause notice by the party. Joshi replied to the notice and, in February 2023, resigned as the Chief Whip.

Mounting troubles

Towards the end of the Gehlot government, however, Joshi’s troubles began to accumulate. In 2022, a rape case was lodged with the Delhi Police against his son Rohit, while Mahesh Joshi’s wife suffered brain haemorrhage.

In April 2023, while Gehlot was CM, a 38-year-old hanged himself, accusing Joshi and others of creating problems for his family in connection with a land dispute. About a couple of months later, BJP leader Kirodi Lal Meena alleged a massive scam in Joshi’s PHED. This led to an FIR by the Anti-Corruption Bureau and subsequently an investigation by the ED and CBI.

Ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections in November, the ED conducted raids at various locations in the state, including Joshi’s office in the Secretariat.

Amidst these legal troubles and facing the wrath of the high command for engineering the CLP boycott, Joshi was dropped as the party candidate from Hawa Mahal with just 20 days to go for polling.

In January 2024, the ED conducted searches at eight locations, including Joshi’s residential premises.

Top Congress leadership, including Gehlot, Dotasra and Leader of Opposition Tika Ram Jully have severely criticised Joshi’s arrest now.

Lokesh Sharma, the ex-Gehlot OSD, expressed his “full sympathies” with Joshi, while taking a swipe at the former CM. “Gehlot must have made many grand promises and statements to Joshi as well,” he said.