BJP's Jyotiraditya Scindia’s Hopes To Regain The Lost Fortress of Guna

From Congress to the BJP, the electoral journey for Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh has been one of victory, defeat, and shifting allegiance. 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.

The Scindia family has a deep and long history with the Guna parliamentary seat. Grandmother Vijayaraje Scindia won the seat from 1957 to 1998 on a Congress, BSP, and Swatantra Party ticket. Madhavrao won the seat three times: as a Bharatiya Jana Sangh (predecessor of the BJP) candidate in 1971; as an independent in 1977, and then on a Congress ticket in 1980.

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.” As other MLAs who were loyal to him also resigned and walked out of the assembly, the Madhya Pradesh government collapsed, and it replaced Kamal Nath with Shivraj Chouhan as the new chief minister. Scindia currently serves as the Union Minister of Civil Aviation in the Modi cabinet.

The titular ‘Maharaja’ of Gwalior is pitted against fellow defector Rao Yadvendra Singh. The former BJP member joined Congress after quitting 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, Singh was defeated by the BJP’s Brijendra Singh Yadav from the Mungawali assembly seat.

However, the grand old party has placed its bets on Singh owing to the majority of OBC votes in the region where the Lok Sabha candidate wields significant influence.