Sachin Pilot: The Congress' Rajasthan Chief Minister-In-Waiting?

At the start of 2020 Sachin Pilot was Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister and boss of the Congress' state unit. Only 43 and already a Union Minister, articulate and dynamic, he was tipped to become a future Chief Minister. By the end of the year - after a failed coup against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot - he was sacked from both posts and relegated to the sidelines of the Congress' state structure.

Since then, Mr Pilot, the son of late Congress MP and Union Minister Rajesh Pilot, has quietly worked his way back into favour and rebuilt bridges - with his party, if not yet Mr Gehlot - and in August this year he was appointed to the Congress Working Committee, the party's highest decision-making body.

Now, with the election at hand, he is back - helping, discreetly, to drive a re-election bid in a state that has voted out the incumbent every time since 1993. A two-time Lok Sabha MP and the sitting MLA from Tonk, the Congress knows Sachin Pilot, 46, is a key asset - with significant pull among voters, particularly the Gurjars, who make up between six and 10 per cent of the vote base.

Who is Sachin Pilot?

Born in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur, Mr Pilot is the son of a former Air Force veteran and holds a MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennslyvania. Before politics, he worked with the BBC and American automotive giant General Motors. He made his political debut when he was 26. 

He won the Dausa Lok Sabha seat in 2004 and the Ajmer in 2009, and was rewarded with a cabinet berth in the Congress-led UPA government. He lost Ajmer in 2014 but was voted to the Assembly in 2018 from Tonk, a seat that has flipped between the BJP and Congress even longer than the state - since 1980.

Considered a "youth icon" in Rajasthan, Mr Pilot is often greeted with chants of "I love you" during rallies. "It's an unadulterated type of outpouring I receive sometimes from people who like what I do and say," he told NDTV in an interview in which he also admitted to stress-eating during elections.

"I wake up around 5.30 am and the day ends at around 1 am. But election times are different, it's very hectic... I have noticed that during elections I put on weight, I think, because of stress eating." His choice of stress-busters - "Fistfuls of namkeen, kaju, barfi, samosa... Whatever is available".

READ | "Barfi, Samosa, Namkeen": Sachin Pilot On "Stress-Eating" During Elections

Away from politics, Mr Pilot married Sara Abdullah, the daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah in 2004. The couple have two sons but are now divorced, according to the poll affidavit he filed before this election.

Sachin Pilot 2.0

Ahead of this election, Mr Pilot has been careful to shut down talk of another tilt at the Chief Minister's chair. "It is a long-standing tradition (that) we don't declare a CM face. We are a national party and we don't have just one face. Once we get the mandate, then the MLAs will decide," he told NDTV. 

And his "forgive and forget" comment - on tension with Mr Gehlot - also made headlines.

"It is in the past. We met (Congress boss Mallikarjun) Kharge and (Rahul) Gandhi... the party took cognisance (of my concerns)," he said, although there have been flashes of the feud this year too, such as when he sat on a fast to demand action against corruption accused from the earlier BJP government. 

But this is still the same Sachin Pilot that helped engineer the party's 2018 win, and his relevance was highlighted even by Prime Ministe Narendra Modi this week, who invoked his father's name to win over Congress votes, particularly among Gurjars, by claiming "victimisation" of the Tonk MLA.

That the Congress and Mr Gehlot were quick to react and defend underlines the concerted bid to present a united front before the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly election.

READ | "To Provoke Gurjars": Ashok Gehlot Hits Back After PM's Rajesh Pilot Jab

The party knows Sachin Pilot still holds enormous sway over the voters of Rajasthan, many of whom firmly believe Captain Pilot (he is also a commissioned officer in the Territorial Army) will become Chief Minister of Rajasthan, soon... very soon.