Summary:
Jaipur, Sep 26 (PTI) Congress"s chief whip in the Rajasthan Assembly Mahesh Joshi on Monday said the party MLAs have no objection to whoever is made the chief minister, but the final decision of the high-command should be agreeable to them.
Meanwhile, a video purportedly of a meeting of the Congress MLAs loyal to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has surfaced.
Minister Shanti Dhariwal, at whose residence the meeting took place, is heard saying in the video that the Congress will suffer losses if Gehlot is removed from the chief minister"s post.
Gehlot, along with state Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra, met AICC observers Mallikarjun Kharge and Ajay Maken at a hotel on the Jaipur-Delhi highway on Monday.
Some of the Congress MLAs were also seen at the hotel.
Kharge and Maken left for Delhi after the meeting.
The Congress in Rajasthan plunged into a crisis on Sunday as several MLAs loyal to Gehlot resigned over a possible move to appoint Sachin Pilot as Gehlot"s successor, their rebellion erupting just ahead of a Congress Legislature Party meeting.
Joshi said the MLAs have no objection to whoever is made the chief minister, but the final decision taken by the party high-command should be agreeable to them.
"The doubts of the MLAs should be cleared by the high-command and then, whatever decision is taken will be accepted.
We do not have any objection if anyone is made the chief minister but the final decision should have consensus," he told reporters here.
Joshi also said the ministers that met the AICC observers at the chief minister"s residence on Sunday night had not asked them to include the conditions of the MLAs in the party"s resolution.
"It was not that we wanted everything in the resolution.
Maybe we failed to make them (the observers) understand or it is also possible that we tried but they did not understand.
But we did not talk about any kind of amendment in the resolution," he said.
Joshi said it is wrong to say the ministers did not meet Kharge and Maken, adding that the MLAs had authorised a delegation to put their demands before the party observers, which it did.
Joshi himself, along with Dhariwal and Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, met the AICC observers on Sunday night.
Joshi said they put forward three conditions -- a decision on the selection of the chief minister should be taken after the Congress presidential poll, the chief minister should be from among those MLAs who stood with the government during the political crisis in 2020 and not from the Pilot camp, and the AICC observers should hold meetings in groups instead of one-on-one as sought by the high-command.
On the other hand, Congress MLA Giriraj Singh Malinga said the government does not have a majority in the Assembly after the resignation of the Gehlot loyalists.
He said a mid-term election is the best way forward.
"The speaker should accept the resignation of the MLAs.