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Who is Sachin Pilot?
Indian politician Captain Sachin Pilot was born on September 7, 1977, and is a member of the Indian National Congress (INC). He has served in many roles which included being the president of the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee, deputy chief minister of Rajasthan, and independent charge of corporate affairs and communication and IT for the Indian government.
Since 2018, he has held the Tonk assembly seat in Rajasthan as a member of the Congress party. Sachin Pilot is the youngest politician to ever become a Member of Parliament (MP).
In 2009, Pilot was elected to the Indian Parliament to represent the Rajasthani constituencies of Ajmer and Dausa. He was elected to the latter seat in 2004 at the age of 26, making him the youngest Member of Parliament. He was defeated in the 2014 election for the Ajmer constituency and expelled from the Lok Sabha. Between the years 2012 and 2014, he was the minister of Corporate Affairs under the UPA-2 administration.
Personal life and Education
Sachin Pilot was born into the family of a former Congress leader Rajesh Pilot as father and Rama Pilot as mother. His father served as an Indian Union minister. Vaidpura is his ancestral village, which lies in Uttar Pradesh's Greater Noida (West).
He received his education at the Air Force Bal Bharati School in New Delhi, and did his B.A. from St. Stephens College in Delhi. Pilot also holds a marketing diploma from I.M.T. Ghaziabad, and has pursued his MBA from the Wharton School in Philadelphia, USA. His professional stint involved working with the Delhi Department of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and afterward with the American multinational corporation General Motors for two years.
On January 15, 2004, Pilot tied the knot with Sara Abdullah. She is the daughter of Farooq Abdullah, a former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. They have two sons, Vehaan and Aaran. Rajesh Pilot, his father, was a Member of Parliament as well as a Union Minister.
Political career
Pilot won the Dausa constituency in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. He became India's youngest MP at the age of 26. He won the seat of Ajmer in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, defeating Kiran Maheshwari of the Bharatiya Janata Party by 76,596 votes.
The pilot was a member of the Consultative Committee in the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Standing Committee on Home Affairs in the Lok Sabha. He was appointed Minister of Corporate Affairs in the second Manmohan Singh government in 2012.
He ran for the Ajmer seat again in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, but Sanwarlal Jat, a sitting MLA for the Bharatiya Janata Party, defeated him by 1,71,983 votes.
He was given the position of President of the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee in the year 2014. Pilot won the Tonk seat in the 2018 Legislative Assembly elections, defeating Yunus Khan by 54,179 votes. It was expected that Pilot, who was viewed as instrumental in the Congress' triumph in the state, would be given the post of chief minister. He was sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister of Rajasthan under Ashok Gehlot on December 17, 2018.
Army service
Pilot fulfilled his desire to follow in his father's footsteps and join the armed forces by becoming the first Union minister of India to be commissioned as an officer in the Territorial Army on September 6, 2012.
He is known as Captain Pilot for being an official in the Territorial Army. In the wake of being commissioned, he said, "This has been my desire to join the army for very long as I wanted to have my links with the armed forces, like my father and grandfather. I am honored to be part of this family."
Interesting Facts and Achievements
Sachin Pilot enjoys flying and shooting as well. In 1995, he graduated from NY USA with his private pilot's licence (PPL). He participated in numerous national rifle and pistol shooting championships as a representative of Delhi. In addition, he has been promoted to Lieutenant in the Territorial Army. Because he is an officer in the Territorial Army, he is known as Lieutenant Pilot.
Sachin has a strong fascination with issues connected with farmers and the young. Agriculture and rural development, international trade and economics, domestic and international news and current affairs, as well as strategic and foreign affairs, are areas of interest for him. In 2001, he published a book about his father titled "Rajesh Pilot: In Spirit for All Time.”
In partnership with CM Gehlot
On the advice of party president Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress leader Sachin Pilot claimed that he had buried the hatchet with Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and that collective leadership was the "only way" forward heading into the assembly elections.
According to Pilot, Kharge instructed him to "forgive and forget" and move on. It was as much a guidance as a directive."
“Ashok ji is more experienced and older than I am. He has heavy responsibilities on his shoulders. When I was the Rajasthan Congress president, I attempted to take everybody along. I think that today he is the Chief Minister (Gehlot), so he is trying to take everyone along,” Sachin Pilot had remarked to a news agency.
Controversy and Allegations
Gehlot and Pilot have participated in a power tussle since the Congress formed government in the state in 2018. Pilot was fired as the party's state unit president and deputy chief minister after leading a revolt against the Gehlot government in 2020.
After Gehlot loyalists dug in and prevented a meeting of the legislature party from taking place, the high command's attempt to bring about a leadership change in Rajasthan last year was unsuccessful.
The pilot had last month opposed a warning from the party and proceeded with a day-long fast targeting of Gehlot over his "inaction" on alleged corruption during the past Raje government.
He had also challenged in the Rajasthan High Court BJP Government’s controversial ordinance from taking up cases against legislators, officials and ministers without sanctions and preventing media from mentioning names in the corruption cases in Oct 2017.
His vision towards Congress and Rajasthan
The challenge for Pilot is to buck the approximately 25-year anti-incumbency trend. "It is a cause of concern as to why we form the government and then we lose rather badly in the next polls," he stated. The pilot added, "It is the only way to go," when further questioned as to whether collective leadership was the best strategy in Rajasthan.
When questioned about his concern regarding anti-incumbency, Pilot stated that every government has a certain amount of unaccomplished work. "There is anti-incumbency in Rajasthan as there is in other places. The next challenge for us is to win decisions, neither people nor explanations matter, those are past events," he added.
The pilot also argued that winnability, not a candidate's affiliation with a particular faction, should be the sole criterion for selecting candidates for the polls. Additionally, he demanded that younger leaders be supported and given the opportunity to demonstrate their worth at the hustings.
Net Worth
Salary- 65000+ other allowances (in 2019)
Jewellery- 12.74 lakh
Commercial Building- 1.12 crore
Agricultural Lands- Worth 84+ Lakh
Residential Buildings- Worth 1.38 crore
Total Net Worth- 6.4 crores (as of 2018).