Amid Rajasthan political standoff, Gehlot speaks to PM Modi

PTI, Jul 28, 2020, 9:17 AM IST

New Delhi: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Monday, July 27 said he has spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to apprise him of the political situation in the state, and added that the prime minister has promised him to get the matter seen.

Gehlot said, “He also wrote to the prime minister a few days back over the issue, even as the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) on Monday sent a memorandum to President Ram Nath Kovind, seeking his intervention to facilitate an assembly session in the state.”

Apprising a CLP meeting of his talks with the prime minister, Gehlot said: “I told him that I had written a letter to you and this is the situation. Governor behaved like this with us. The PM said that he will get the matter seen as if he did not know anything.”

The chief minister said that he also tweeted his letter to the PM to him so that when he meets him at any function, he does not say he did not know about it.

CLP members, meanwhile, claimed in the memorandum to President Kovind that the horse-trading of MLAs was on in Rajasthan to topple an elected government. Governors of many states are “defying” the Constitution at the behest of the ruling party at the Centre without worrying about the dignity of their posts, they alleged in the memorandum.

A Congress leader apprised reporters of the Gehlot talks to the PM after a meeting at a hotel here where MLAs are holed up following rebellion by Sachin Pilot against the Gehlot government.

The Congress leader said a retired secretary general of Lok Sabha observed that it is for the first time in 70 years that the governor has returned the cabinet’s decision to convene an assembly session.

“Previously, sessions have been called on short notices. Making seating arrangements is a tension of the assembly and the speaker and not of the governor. You can understand why questions are being asked,” a government statement said later, quoting the chief minister.