Union Minister for Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia has won the Guna seat in Madhya Pradesh against his rival and Congress candidate Rao Yadvendra Singh with a huge margin of over 5,40,929 votes in the Lok Sabha election. Scindia has won 9,23,302 votes while Singh has managed 3,82,373 votes so far.
Hailing from a royal and political descent, Scindia is the grandson of Jiwajirao Scindia, the last Maharaja of the princely state of Gwalior. His father, Madhavrao, was a politician and a minister in the government of Rajiv Gandhi. His mother, Madhavi Raje (Kiran Rajya Lakshmi Devi), hails from the royal family of Nepal.
After joining the Congress in 2002, he contested the Guna constituency after it felt vacant due to the death of his father, who was the sitting MP at the time. He won the election with a margin of approximately 450,000 votes and was re-elected in 2004 as well. In 2007, he became the Union Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology. In 2009, he won his third consecutive term and became the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry.
He retained the Guna seat in 2014 but lost to former aide and BJP’s Krishna Pal Singh Yadav in 2019 by a margin of over 125,000 votes. In 2020, he quit the Congress after disagreements with the INC leadership, who stated that Scindia was expelled because of “anti-party activities.”
His closest rival is fellow defector Rao Yadvendra Singh who joined the Congress after leaving the BJP ahead of the state assembly elections in 2023. Son of late BJP MLA Deshraj Singh Yadav, Singh serves only as a Panchayat member. In the 2023 assembly elections, he was defeated by the BJP’s Brijendra Singh Yadav from the Mungawali assembly seat.