The possible fate of 67-year-old Ashok Gehlot is as much a talking point in Jodhpur as this weekend’s wedding of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas in the Blue City.

The Congress veteran, who has twice been chief minister in the past, is again in contention for the post, competing with 41-year-old Sachin Pilot, widely seen as Rahul Gandhi’s choice.

Gehlot is contesting from the Sardarpura constituency in Jodhpur, which he has represented four times in a row. Rajasthan’s 200 Assembly constituencies go to the polls on December 7.

“If the Congress wins by a big margin, Pilot will be chief minister,” Manvendra Mathur, 35, said, looking up from his newspaper page that announced the arrival of Priyanka and Nick in the city.

“But if the Congress is restricted to a narrow majority,” Mathur asserted, “it has to be Gehlot and no one else.”

Most voters feel that Gehlot alone can run a government with a vulnerable majority. Many point to the large number of Congress rebels in the fray to claim it’s all part of the canny veteran’s ploy to keep his party’s victory margin down.

Amit Shah at a rally in Jodhpur on Saturday. (PTI)

The accepted wisdom is that Gehlot is sure to retain his seat and the Congress a certainty to win the election, with the only question being whether the veteran returns to the chief minister’s chair.

“All the surveys and satta markets were predicting a Congress sweep. But after the ticket distribution, they have scaled up the BJP’s tally,” a Congress politician said in Jodhpur.

Denied tickets, several Congress hopefuls have entered the fray as Independent candidates. Many voters and even Congress officials believe that Gehlot exerted a far greater influence than Pilot on candidate selection.

The BJP too has faced rebellion but on a lower scale than the Congress. Local BJP politicians claim that party president Amit Shah got in touch with most of the rebels and many of them relented. The Congress had to expel more than two dozen rebels.

Gopal Gehlot, who was Congress district president in Bikaner but has now been expelled, is contesting from two seats in Bikaner city.

His name had figured in the first Congress list, which had dropped former leader of the Opposition B.D. Kalla, a local stalwart, in his favour.

Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra in a picture from the mehendi ceremony tweeted by Nick. The couple had a Christian wedding at Umaid Bhavan palace in Jodhpur on Saturday, which will be followed by a Hindu wedding on Sunday (PTI)

Protests followed. The present leader of the Opposition, Rameshwar Duddi, threatened not to contest if Kalla, his nominee, was denied a ticket. The party leadership caved in and dropped Gopal.

Many voters believe that Gopal will now make the Congress’s chances iffy in the two seats he is contesting, both of which the party should normally have won easily.

In the Jodhpur subdivision, where the BJP had won 30 of the 33 seats the last time, the widespread anger against chief minister Vasundhara Raje had offered the Congress an opportunity. But the rebels are threatening to play spoilsport in at least 10 seats.

“Ashok Gehlot is a very shrewd politician. He will not let Rahul Gandhi pick Sachin Pilot,” said Mohammad Zakir in Sardarpura, portraying the strong rebel presence as proof of Gehlot’s political mastery.

Gehlot, who belongs to the backward Mali community, is otherwise seen widely as a “humble and very accessible leader” in contrast to Vasundhara, viewed as an “arrogant queen”. As chief minister between 1998 and 2003 and again from 2008 to 2013, he earned praise for his deft handling of the notorious caste rivalries among Rajputs, Jats and Gujjars.

“He is very accessible and cares for all sections of society,” said Yogesh Bhansali, a trader in Jodhpur.

Pilot is from the Gujjar community, which has a reputation for “aggressiveness”. Despite his image as a “modern” and “suave” politician, the state Congress leadership is sharply divided over appointing a Gujjar as chief minister.

The powerful Gehlot camp argues that elevating Pilot can anger the other castes and hurt the party in Rajasthan during next summer’s general election.

“Rahul Gandhi needs Gehlot if he wants to stop Modi’s march in Rajasthan in 2019,” a local Congress politician said, highlighting that the BJP had swept all the state’s 25 Lok Sabha seats in 2014.