Of late, Gudha, a former BSP leader, had virtually overtaken MLA Ved Prakash Solanki as the most outspoken leader in the Sachin Pilot camp, and hence the action was long time coming, party leaders say, even though it was still unexpected.
On Friday, Gudha was egged on by Leader of the Opposition Rajendra Rathore, and he took the bait. Minutes after Congress MLAs returned to their seats in the Assembly after storming the Well on the Manipur issue, Gudha tried to speak out of turn during the debate on the minimum income Bill introduced by the government, and was asked by Chairperson J P Chandelia to sit down. Rathore then intervened and said to Chandelia: “A minister is speaking, sabhapati mahoday (Mr Chairperson), maybe he wants to reply on behalf of the government. No one can speak better than him.”
Gudha promptly stood up and criticised his own government’s crime record, followed soon after by his sacking.
An alternative explanation for Gudha’s actions can perhaps be found in a statement by him from 2021. Days after he was made a minister in November that year, Gudha, while addressing a rally in his Assembly constituency of Udaipurwati in Jhunjhunu, Gudha said: “I win elections from the BSP, become a minister in a Congress government, and when it’s time for the Congress to pick up the carpet, then I leave the Congress.”
The statement wouldn’t have pleased the Congress top brass, given how close it hit home. Gudha had won as an MLA from Udaipurwati on a BSP ticket in 2008, only to merge with all five other BSP MLAs into the Congress a year later. Promptly, Gehlot, who was the CM then too, had made Gudha a Minister of State for Tourism. In 2013, Gudha lost Udaipurwati on a Congress ticket, the Congress lost power simultaneously, and Gudha made his way back to the BSP. In 2018, he won back the seat on a BSP ticket and, again, a year later, he and the other five BSP MLAs merged into the Congress. In 2021, Gudha was back as MoS in a Gehlot government.
Gudha, 55, has not just proved adept at adapting between parties, but also at reading the winds within the Congress and changing course accordingly. And so, since the first half of 2022, when it began to appear to him that the Congress would back Pilot in the coming months, he shifted camps. In hindsight, Gudha appeared to have got it wrong.
A two-term MLA, Gudha derives his surname from his ancestral village in the Udaipurwati tehsil of Jhunjhunu. He identifies “MLA pension” as his source of income, while his wife Nisha Kanwar runs a dairy. They have two children — a son and a daughter. As per his 2018 affidavit, he and his wife own property worth approximately Rs 95 lakh.
Bhanwar Singh Bhati, also an MoS in the Gehlot government, is a Congress leader married to Gudha’s sister Rajesh Kanwar.
And it’s not just the BSP and the Congress that Gudha’s links run to. Before the seat was delimited, his brother Ranveer Singh was elected to the Assembly on a Lok Jan Shakti Party ticket from Gudha in 2003.
Even before he openly aligned with Pilot, Gudha was known for constantly arm-twisting the Gehlot government. Upset over his former “BSP junior” Ramesh Meena being made a Cabinet minister while he himself was an MoS in 2021, Gudha had sulked for about three weeks before taking charge.
The Congress continued to put up with his tantrums because every MLA’s vote counted in the shifting sands of Rajasthan politics, something not lost on Gudha.
In his first major comment against Gehlot, made in June 2022, Gudha said, “Gehlot saheb bolte bahut hain ki ye kiya. Bolte toh hain hi, media mein bolte hain. Kabhi baith ke chinta karte toh zyada theek hota (Gehlot talks a lot, that he has done this, that. And a lot of it is to the media. It would have been better if he sat down more and thought over stuff).”
The comment came ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections, when the Congress had sequestered its MLAs at an Udaipur resort. Gudha was among six party MLAs who were sulking and gave the resort a miss, until Gehlot met them personally and flew with them to Udaipur.
Following the events of September 25, 2022 — when most Congress MLAs skipped a Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting that was to select a successor to Gehlot – Gudha made his ‘loyalty’ for Pilot open. He said when it became clear that Gehlot was going to Delhi (as party president), “We decided that for Rajasthan, there is no candidate better Sachin Pilot. If Pilot is made the CM today, we will repeat the government in Rajasthan 100 per cent… There is a craze for Sachin Pilot among the youth. The previous government was formed due to Pilot… If there are one-to-one talks with MLAs, 90 per cent will take his name.”
Of course, that didn’t prove the case as Gehlot chose not to go to Delhi, in an unimaginable defiance of the high command.
Undeterred, in November 2022, Gudha alleged centralisation of power under Gehlot, saying people have to approach the CM’s Office even to get transfers of constables cleared. That same month, following Gehlot’s “gaddar (traitor)” barb at Pilot, Gudha accused the CM of gaddari, in a comment on his not following the high command’s diktat. He also said that if Pilot was not the made CM, so few Congress MLAs would win that they would all fit into a SUV.
He also said: “I don’t ask for votes in the name of a flower or a hand, but for my face.”
In December, he took on Gehlot again, this time on the emerging government recruitment exam paper leak scam, saying, “We are unable (to hold examinations securely). We are failing.”
In January 2023, Pilot addressed one of his five back-to-back farmer rallies on January 18 in Gudha’s constituency, Udaipurwati.
One of his last comments against Gehlot – before Friday – was made in May, at another Pilot rally, in Jaipur: “The Rajasthan government’s alignment has gone wrong. Our government has crossed all limits of corruption. In Karnataka, the charge was 40 per cent (commission) but our government here has gone beyond that.”
He also attacked senior Cabinet minister Shanti Dhariwal, saying that “no file leaves your office without corruption” and levelled allegations against Cabinet Minister for Mines Pramod Bhaya and former education minister Govind Singh Dotasra, the Congress state president.
And then there are the cases against Gudha. In February this year, he was booked for abduction, for which too he promptly pointed fingers at Gehlot. “If a case is lodged against a minister, it can’t be without the CM’s knowledge, as the Home (department) is also with him. He could have asked me what it was about before the case was filed.”
This was the third such criminal case against Gudha. In 2016, following a road accident in which a man died, Gudha allegedly assaulted cops and damaged public property. He was arrested and booked under IPC Sections 147 (rioting), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), and others, besides the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act. There is another case against him, lodged under IPC Sections 353 and 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to a public servant).
Like his shifting political loyalties, Gudha has been as brazen about his cases. “I have a licence for jail. I renew it every five years. This time, it hasn’t happened yet,” he said in November last year.
But this time, one thing has changed, as Gudha would have realised on Friday. Elections are barely four months away and there is virtually no threat before Gehlot now of a rebellion; the Pilot camp is weaker compared to three years or even ten months ago; and Pilot has seemingly buried the hatchet with Gehlot after a nudge from the high command.
Even Pilot hence may not rush to the side of his loyalist come lately.
Gudha’s sacking has also sent a stern message down the Congress ranks, after the party’s consistent threats to do so against those speaking out against the Rajasthan government, since the Pilot-led rebellion in mid-2020.
Whether Gudha has overplayed his hand or forced Gehlot to play his, will be clearer as elections draw nearer. Gudha has denied claims that he is again preparing to jump ranks, to return to the BSP. Earlier this month, he established contact with another party seeking to find its feet in Rajasthan: he met AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi.
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