"I sometimes think of leaving it, but the chief minister's post doesn't leave me," Ashok Gehlot famously said earlier this year, in part as a signal to the Congress top brass not to pick someone else for the job if the party wins the assembly polls. Over the past several months Gehlot, 72, tried every trick up his sleeve -- he has his magician father's blood running through his veins, after all -- to retain the post.