Own up Vaibhav Gehlot’s defeat in Lok Sabha polls, father Ashok Gehlot tells Sachin Pilot

The blame game has begun in Rajasthan Congress over the party's poor performance in the recently concluded Lok Sabha Elections 2019 with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot saying that Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief and his deputy Sachin Pilot should take the responsibility for his son Vaibhav’s defeat.

Gehlot told ABP News that it was Pilot who said that Vaibhav will win from Jodhpur Lok Sabha seat and therefore he should own complete responsibility for his defeat.

“Pilot Saab also said that we will win Jodhpur with a big margin, because we have six MLAs in the LS constituency and our poll campaign was fabulous. So, I feel he should own complete responsibility for the seat at least. There should be a post-mortem of the result in Jodhpur seat to find out why we did not win it,” Gehlot said in an interview with ABP News.

Earlier, Congress president Rahul Gandhi had reportedly reprimanded Gehlot – along with Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath and former union minister P Chidambaram – saying he placed their sons before party interests.

Gandhi reportedly told the CWC that these senior leaders had put the interests of their sons before the interests of the party. Taunting Gehlot the Congress chief said the Rajasthan CM spent seven days campaigning for his son in Jodhpur neglecting the rest of the state.

Gehlot had reportedly taken part in over 130 rallies and road shows, 93 of them in Jodhpur alone. His son, however, lost to the BJP, which took 24 of the 25 seats in the state, with one seat going to its ally.

However, officials considered close to Gehlot countered the allegations providing a list of public meetings addressed by him in Rajasthan during the general election campaign. They claimed that he addressed 104 rallies of which only 14 were in his son’s constituency, Jodhpur.

The official also said that Gehlot participated in filing of nomination papers of 22 of the 25 Congress Lok Sabha candidates and visited every Lok Sabha constituency at least thrice.