Sachin Pilot, one of the Congress’s “talented” young leaders, may be talking about injustice and victimhood, but many believe that he has been felled by his overarching ambition.

Defections aren’t rare in the Congress and the top leadership rarely goes out of its way to persuade a leader to stay back. The kind of treatment Pilot has got is exceptional — the sulking leader was offered the entire world but he kept crying for the moon, many believe. Those who have spent five-six decades in the party had never witnessed such importance being given to anybody in the past, they said.

A top leader involved in placating Pilot told The Telegraph: “We offered him key portfolios like home (in the Rajasthan government), a state unit (PCC) president of his choice (when he demits office), more ministers from his camp, (the post of) AICC general secretary if he did not want to work with Ashok Gehlot… but he was stuck on one demand: the removal of the chief minister. How could we remove a chief minister who has demonstrated the support of over 100 MLAs on the insistence of a deputy who commands the support of 15-20 MLAs?”

This leader added: “Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Ahmed Patel, P. Chidambaram and general secretary in-charge of organisation K.C. Venugopal spoke to him several times over the past few days. Never ever had we seen this level of engagement with a defiant rebel.

“His crime was unpardonable; he not only tried to destabilise an important government of the party, there is also video evidence to show how some of his aides were hatching a conspiracy to defeat the Congress in the Rajya Sabha elections. You can see lots of cash in the video. Still our leaders tried to accommodate him.”

Gehlot, the veteran Rajasthan chief minister, also referred to the purported conspiracy to destabilise his government, claiming that he was aware of it since March.

Gehlot said in Jaipur on Tuesday after briefing the governor on the turn of events: “It is a BJP game; Pilot has no powers now. He is a puppet in the BJP’s hands. The entire arrangement at the Gurgaon hotel (where Pilot and MLAs loyal to him are believed to be putting up) is done by the BJP. Some of our MLAs also got misled and went with him.”

The chief minister pointed to a grave crisis in politics. “Earlier, governments were made with the people’s mandate. Now money power and coercion make governments. We saw this in several states, very recently in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Mind-boggling amounts of money are poured in. Where are we going, what will happen to democracy?

“The need of the hour is to save the people from corona. I was moving with the mission — koi bhukha nahin soyega (nobody will sleep hungry). Now what should I do? Fight these battles or corona? Showing the brazenness to topple the government at this juncture is a sin.”

The way Congress leaders and workers are viewing the episode is in sharp contrast with the belief that the party had failed to retain “a talented young leader”.

A 60-year-old who has risen through the party’s student and youth wings — the NSUI and the Youth Congress — said: “What is talent? To bargain with the ideological enemy for the chief minister’s post? Is talent in politics placing personal ambitions above party interest? Almost 25 per cent of the BJP is made of such talented people from the Congress.”

Another top Congress functionary said: “Kamal Nath, who became an MP in 1980 at the age of 34, was made the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh at the age of 72. He was not only talented — he won Lok Sabha elections nine times — but also very resourceful. He never blackmailed the party to become chief minister.

“Pilot was made an MP in 2004 at the age of 27, a central minister in 2009 at the age of 32, the state (Rajasthan) unit president at 37 and deputy chief minister at 41. It is a rare case of too much, too early; and not of too little, too late.”

The perception that the old guard is not allowing the new generation to come up is seen to be preposterous as giving the reins to Gehlot was a collective decision because both the Congress MLAs and the friendly Independents preferred him.

Even in the current crisis, the central command has been in the hands of Rahul and Priyanka, and the central observers sent to Rajasthan to tide over the crisis are all young leaders — Randeep Surjewala, Ajay Maken and Venugopal. Retaining Gehlot as the chief minister is certainly not the decision of the old guard alone.

The central leadership of no party tolerates blackmail and they all have their unique considerations for choosing state-level leaders. When Narendra Modi foisted Manoharlal Khattar in Haryana, Raghuvar Das in Jharkhand, Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra, Trivendra Singh Rawat in Uttarakhand and Jairam Thakur in Himachal Pradesh, neither merit nor seniority was the criteria.

Entrenched leaders of the BJP in these states were known to have been upset but there was no rebellion because of the brute force of the high command.

The Congress central leadership is at its weakest moment now and “talented” leaders are trying to exploit this situation for their personal advantage. Jyotiraditya Scindia, another “talented leader”, became the saboteur in Madhya Pradesh by slipping into the embrace of the ideologically incompatible BJP, evoking a sympathetic response from critics who saw this as another Congress failure.

Party workers who toil at the grassroots for decades and leaders who have remained with the Congress through ups and downs wonder if “talent” can be devoid of virtues like morality, ideological commitment and personal loyalty.

They are rattled by the revolts by Scindia and Pilot, who the party had so heavily invested in, but are of the firm opinion that the leadership must deal with traitors with an iron hand. The dominant view is that the weakest moments are the best occasions for a purge and reconstruction.