All Rajasthan ministers resign ahead of Cabinet reshuffle

All Ministers in the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan evening resigned on Saturday evening, setting stage for the much-awaited reshuffle demanded by the Chief Minister's bete-noire Sachin Pilot.

Gehlot's new team is likely to take oath on Sunday and is expected to have some members of the Pilot faction, which had risen in revolt against the Chief Minister last year. It also remains to be seen whether Pilot would move to the a central leadership role as General Secretary, as he had earlier said that he would take up any assignment given to him by party chief Sonia Gandhi.

The resignations came after a meeting at Gehlot's residence in Jaipur that lasted around 45 minutes. At present, the Gehlot Ministry has 21 ministers and as per provisions, it can have up to 30 ministers, including the Chief Minister.

Earlier in the day, Gehlot, Congress General Secretary and party in-charge Ajay Maken and Rajasthan Congress president Govind Singh Dotasra addressed a 'Kisan Vijay Diwas' gathering. Gehlot and Maken, who reached Jaipur on Friday evening, also held a separate meeting.

Gehlot and Pilot are locked in a fight within the party for prominence. Gehlot had successfully thwarted an earlier attempt by Pilot and his supporters to replace the former couple last July.

"All ministers resigned in the meeting. We have been asked to go to the PCC office at 2 pm on Sunday where further instructions will be given by the Chief Minister , Congress General Secretary Ajay Maken and PCC chief Dotasra," outgoing Transport Minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas said.

State Congress chief and Education Minister Dotasra and two other ministers moved a proposal during the meeting, which was agreed by others.

On Friday, Dotasra, Harish Chaudhary and Raghu Sharma, all ministers, offered their resignations in writing to Sonia after the party decided to follow 'one man, one post' policy in Rajasthan after deliberations Gehlot and Pilot had with central leadership in the past few days.

While Dotasra is the party chief in the state, Chaudhary was recently appointed Congress in-charge of poll-bound Punjab after Harish Rawat was divested of charges. Sharma has been made in-charge of Gujarat following the death of Rajiv Satav.

Gehlot and Pilot had held separate meetings with Sonia and other Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi, KC Venugopal and Maken in the national capital earlier this month to thrash out the contours of the reshuffle.

After a meeting with Sonia, former Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister Pilot had said that the party will consider "credibility, performance, regional balance and caste combination" as factors for ministerial assignments.

Pilot was sacked as Deputy Chief Minister and his supporters ousted from ministership by Gehlot after the former shifted his MLAs to Delhi and other places, which was seen as an attempt to topple the Congress government with the help of BJP. However, Gehlot swiftly moved to contain the damages and the political drama ended within a month.

The internal tussle in BJP also helped Gehlot to handle the situation as some MLAs loyal to Pilot started having doubts about the success of their plans to unseat the veteran Congress leader.

Watch latest videos by DH here: