A ‘red diary’ is shaking up Rajasthan politics after a close aide-turned-adversary of the Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is narrating his startling version of whisking away the diary three years ago during an ongoing IT-ED raid in Jaipur.
Surprisingly, the diary has now gone ‘missing’ with no one knowing where is the original one.
BJP is now planning a major campaign around the ‘red diary’ with hoardings and cut-outs of the same to be put up across the state.
The claims go like this. Former Rajasthan minister, who joined the Ashok Gehlot government from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Rajendra Gudha said he has in his possession a ‘red diary’ which has shocking details of alleged corruption under the Congress government in the state, dealings of how MLAs were ‘bought’ during the Rajya Sabha elections and the political crisis in the state in 2020. Gudha claims Gehlot asked him to bring the diary from Congress leader Dharmendra Rathore’s flat during a raid on the latter in 2020, and he went there with two other leaders to retrieve the diary.
It is Rathore who had penned the diary, said Gudha. But when Gudha reached with this diary in the state assembly in an attempt to lay it on the floor of the House, unprecedented scenes of scuffles were witnessed. Gudha says another Congress leader Rafiq Khan snatched the diary from him. The BJP is asking if Rafiq Khan has the diary with him while Khan is denying any knowledge of the same. Gudha has tied himself up in knots — first saying the diary was burnt and then claiming he had kept a copy. The Congress is terming all such claims as lies and propaganda.
Unanswered Questions
The big question is how Gudha could whisk away the diary from a flat that was undergoing raids by the IT and ED in 2020 at the peak of the political crisis in the state. Another version is that Gudha got the diary out from Dharmendra Rathore’s flat after it was seized by the central agencies. It is perplexing how Gudha could do this without catching the attention of the central agencies in either event. The BJP now wants ED and IT to act against the ‘disappearance’ of the diary after the revelations.
But Congress leaders are asking why Gudha kept silent on the said ‘diary’ for three-long years and are attributing his utterances to him being removed as a minister by Ashok Gehlot a few days ago. This was after Gudha questioned his own government on the law and order front while speaking in the state assembly. Congress says the ‘red diary’ story has hence been released by Gudha in concert with the BJP. Gudha has now been suspended from the state assembly but he has promised to do more revelations ‘daily’.
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