A former Squadron Leader, Rajeshwar Prasad, as he was originally called, joined the Indian Air Force and liked flying so much that he changed his name to Rajesh Pilot. Hailing from a modest Gujjar family of western Uttar Pradesh, Pilot, father of current Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, used to regularly won from the Dausa Lok Sabha seat in Rajasthan.
Throughout late 1980s and 1990s, Pilot remained popular with the middle class, had established a good name for his politically correct stances, clean image and efficiency. In a political career spread over fifteen years, Pilot loved to take on the high and mighty and enjoyed the media attention. He was an efficient telecom minister under Rajiv Gandhi but after the Babri demolition in 1993, he began to score political points against the likes of Arjun Singh, Sharad Pawar, Madhavrao Scindia and Kamal Nath.
On 25 February 1993, when the BJP organized a demonstration near Parliament, Pilot, as a junior minister in the internal security ministry, made unprecedented bandobast to thwart any threat to mosques in the area. Coming as it did soon after the Babri demolition, there were apprehensions the demonstration could turn violent, but the day passed peacefully. Pilot boasted that had he been in charge of security on 6 December 1992, instead of his senior S.B. Chavan, in the internal security ministry, the mosque would not have been demolished.
Pilot then turned on the heat on godman Chandraswami who was close to the then prime minister Narasimha Rao. A tantrik, Chandraswami had powerful friends like international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the Sultan of Brunei, and Margaret Thatcher, and equally well-placed enemies. In 1995 when the Congress under Rao was in power, Chandraswami was wanted in connection with a series of cases, but nobody could act against him due to his high connections. Pilot got him arrested. It was more than a coincidence that in the subsequent Cabinet reshuffle, Pilot was shunted out of internal security to look after forests and environment.
On 11 June 2000, he drove a jeep at breakneck speed from Dausa to Jaipur to catch a flight to Delhi, he overtook his own escort vehicle at a blind spot and collided with a state transport bus. The man who was always in a hurry left behind a thousand and one unfulfilled ambitions. One of them was to take on Sonia in the AICC organisational polls.
Interestingly, this was not for the first time that Pilot was aiming at the highest level of the grand old party. In May 1991, when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and a clueless Congress had looked for successor, Pilot had thrown his hat in the ring projecting himself as a young leader suited to step into Rajiv’s shoes. Unlike Arjun Singh, Sharad Pawar, Madhavrao Scindia, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, Rajesh Pilot little locus standi in terms of experience either in the organization or in the government. He was, in fact, yet to become a Cabinet minister as he was merely a minister of state in the Rajiv government. His candidature was more in the nature of positioning for the future. Scores of Congresspersons at all levels of hierarchy even now rue that Pilot was not around when the party and country needed him most.
In private conversation, Pilot used to say he was a modest ‘doodhwala’ who, as a young child, sold milk on a bicycle in Lutyen’s Delhi. Pilot's friends say had he lived on, 'doodhwala' could have taken on 'chaiwala'.
[Author-Journalist Rasheed Kidwai is a visiting Fellow of the Observer Research Foundation. He tracks government and politics and considered a specialist on Congress party affairs.]
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