Packed tight: Congress leaders on a bus headed to a hotel in Jaipur on July 14. PTI
With rebel Congress MLAs owing loyalty to former Deputy Chief Minister of Rajasthan Sachin Pilot holed up in a resort in Haryana (with an imminent move to another in Karnataka, sources say), resort politics seems to have become a de rigueur feature of Indian political life.
The sight of the MLAs being herded and sequestered into various five-star (and lesser star) resorts is becoming unfortunately all too familiar. Pictures of MLAs trying out the gym in these places or watching movies together surface from time to time to assure constituents and family that they are well, but what actually happens when a group of MLAs are bunched together?
In his book on the formation of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra, titled Checkmate: How the BJP Won and Lost Maharashtra (Penguin, 2020), Sudhir Suryawanshi goes into major details on just how the Congress MLAs, sequestered (ironically in Jaipur) spent their time.
Apart from a daily roll call, the MLAs were everyday asked about their political stance by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) observer staying with them. Soon enough, writes Mr. Suryawanshi, MLAs broke into various “clubs within clubs”, as he calls it.
For example, industrialists and well-off persons like Amit Deshmukh, Rohidas Daji Patil from Dhule, Ruturaj Patil and Vishwajeet Kadam hung around each other and discussed matters that interested them while another group was of the 16 MLAs elected from Vidarbha, who kept to themselves. There were, of course, discerning drinkers who, too, kept to each other. Many missed home food and raised protests, like MLA Hemant Khoskar who had a hankering for Pitala (also called Jhunka in Marathi) and with the right YouTube video got a five-star chef in Jaipur to prepare it for him.
Community living
The community living is never voluntary and is enforced when poaching of MLAs is feared. Even those not in danger of being poached are often herded with those of whom floor crossing is feared, just to keep the esprit de corps alive.
When Congress MLAs from Karnataka got into a bus right after the Assembly elections of 2018, a senior Congressman, who had been a Minister in the Siddaramaiah government, also had to go along “just to ensure there was no discrimination in terms of perception”.
“I was told I had to go as my not going would send the message that I was somehow more trustworthy and others were not,” he said.
Keeping the MLAs together is a combination of salubrious resorts in States with a friendly government, communication and daily psy ops against attempts by other parties to raid your numbers. Parties have geared up suitably, it seems.
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