Congress Rahul Gandhi took to the air on Monday crisscrossing vast swathes of north India to be personally present at Jaipur, Bhopal and Raipur where senior party colleagues Ashok Gehlot, Kamalnath and Bhupel Baghel were sworn in as the chief ministers of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh respectively.
In Jaipur, Governor Kalyan Singh administered the oath of office and secrecy to Gehlot and also to Sachin Pilot who was sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister. It is Gehlot’s third stint as the chief minister while Pilot is a first-term Deputy CM. Several leaders from Congress and its alliance partners from across the country including Former Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and H D Devegawda and Congress President Rahul Gandhi attended the ceremony. Gehlot served as central minister and President of State Congress Committee for three times. Ousted chief minister Vasundhara Raje was also present at the swearing-in ceremony of Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot.
In Madhya Pradesh, senior Congress leader Kamal Nath was administered the oath of office by Governor Anandiben Patel and party sources say a new cabinet will be named later after the consultations with party leadership. Gandhi with many senior leaders of political parties including Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the outgoing BJP CM, another former state CM Digvijay Singh, National Conference President Farooq Abdullah, Lok Sabha opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge, Andhra Pradesh CM and TDP Chief N Chandrababu Naidu, NCP chief Sharad Pawar. DMK President MK Stalin were also present during the swearing-in ceremony. But the occasion was somewhat marred by the charges of the new chief minister of being an accused in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots being raked up soon after the Delhi High Court earlier in the day pronounced former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar guilty in the anti-Sikh riots that broke in the capital in the aftermath of the assassination of then pm Indira Gandhi
In Raipur, Bhupesh Baghel took over as the chief minister of Chattisgarh. He ws administered the oath of office by the , the couple of senior MLAs would also be sworn-in. The venue of CM designate Bhupesh Baghel’s oath taking ceremony has been changed from Science College ground to Balbir Singh Juneja Indoor Stadium in Raipur, due to continuous rainfall.
—India Legal Bureau