Ashok Gehlot to be Rajasthan’s next chief minister, Sachin Pilot his deputy

After two days of deliberations, endless meetings, and significant jockeying by the supporters of chief ministerial aspirants, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, after consulting various leaders including United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi, and looking at the choice of every booth-level party worker in the states concerned, picked Kamal Nath as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh.

For Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot, 67, was picked as the Rajasthan chief minister and Sachin Pilot, 41, as deputy chief minister. For Chhattisgarh, the decision on the next chief minister is likely to be made on Friday.

The Congress won a landslide in Chhattisgarh, clearly won Rajasthan, and edged out the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the elected legislators of all three states passed resolutions asking Gandhi to pick their CMs. There were two aspirants in Madhya Pradesh, Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia; two in Rajasthan, Gehlot and Pilot; and three in Chhattisgarh, Bhupesh Baghel, TS Singhdeo, and Tamradhwaj Sahu.

The Congress was one short of a clear majority in Rajasthan, winning 99 of the 199 seats for which polls were held. In Madhya Pradesh, it was two seats short of the 116 mark while in Chhattisgarh, it had bagged two-thirds majority with 68 seats.