assembly-elections

Updated: Dec 13, 2018 22:02 IST

Ashok Gehlot, the 67-year-old Congress veteran who is a contender for the Rajasthan chief minister’s post , is fond of magic and travelling, Gehlot told a conjurors’ national convention in 2015 in Udaipur that he would have followed in his magician father’s footstep had he not joined politics. The Congress leader even inaugurated the convention by performing a little trick by popping up a bunch of flowers from a narrow pipe.

He is said to have been brought into politics by former prime minister Indira Gandhi, who noticed his work with refugees in the northeast in the 1970s.

Known for his simple lifestyle, Gehlot headed the Rajasthan unit of the National Students Union of India (NSUI) from 1974 to 1979 in his early years as a politician. He was then elected as the Jodhpur district Congress committee president from 1979 to 1982 and elevated as the state Congress committee’s general secretary.

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He was first elected to Parliament in 1980 and won the Lok Sabha elections four more times. Seen as a staunch loyalist of the Gandhi family, Gehlot contested from Jodhpur’s Sardarpura assembly constituency since 1999 and won for the fifth time this year by defeating the BJP’s Shambhu Singh Khetasar by over 40,000 votes. He had defeated Khetasar in 2013 by a margin of over 18,000 votes and Rajendra Gehlot in 2008.

At the Centre, Gehlot has served as a minister of state in the ministries of tourism, civil aviation, sports and textiles between 1982 and 1993.

He was also the AICC general secretary in charge of Delhi and the Sewa Dal cell from 2004-2009 and member of the Congress Working Committee looking after Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

He first became the chief minister of the desert state in 1998-2003 and his second stint ended in 2013, with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Vasundhara Raje succeeding him both the time. Gehlot has also been at the helm of the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee four times.

The All India Congress Committee general secretary has been roped in by the party in crucial roles at the national level many times. He was appointed the AICC general secretary in charge of Gujarat just months ahead of last year’s assembly polls, which it didn’t win.

Gehlot along with Ghulam Nahi Azad helped cobble up a post-poll coalition with Janata Dal (Secular) to form the government in Karnataka in the recent assembly election.

Born to Laxman Singh Gehlot on May 3, 1951, in Jodhpur, Gehlot is a science and law graduate and also holds a master’s degree in economics. He is married to Sunita Gehlot and has a son Vaibhav and a daughter Sonia.