Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who has been blamed by many Congress leaders for the rebellion by his loyalist MLAs, has been exonerated in the report submitted to party chief Sonia Gandhi. 

State in-charge Ajay Maken, who has been overseeing the matter so far, has advised action against three MLAs.

The three MLAs include chief whip Mahesh Joshi, RTDC chairman Dharmendra Rathore and Shanti Dhariwal, who hosted the parallel meeting of MLAs where they passed a resolution on the next Chief Minister.

The party has now served a show cause notice to the three Rajasthan leaders for what it calls “an act of grave indiscipline”.

The MLAs have to respond within 10 days.

At the meeting, the MLAs had raised the issue of Gehlot’s arch-rival Sachin Pilot’s rebellion in 2020.

They passed a resolution saying the Chief Minister must be chosen from among those who supported the government at the time. They had threatened mass resignation to keep Pilot out of the top post.

The MLAs have been even accused of defying Sonia Gandhi’s instructions, refusing to have one-on-one meetings with the party’s central leaders, and coming up with a list of demands.

The demand included a status quo till the next party chief is elected, which sought to empower Gehlot to pick his successor once he was named the Congress chief.

Before submitting the report, Maken had accused the MLAs of “indiscipline” and said their demand for the status quo would lead to a conflict of interest.

The exemption of Gehlot comes amid efforts to resolve the situation in Rajasthan, which threatened to spin out of control on Sunday. A section of leaders is making efforts to reach out to him.