Back in focus in political turmoil: Jyotiraditya Scindia family’s BJP connections

BHOPAL: Will Jyotiraditya Scindia fulfil his grandmother Vijayaraje Scindia’s dream of the family’s return to BJP — the party she had founded and nurtured along with members of Jana Sangh? Vijayaraje, from the family that once ruled Gwalior, joined electoral politics in 1957 as a Congress member and won Guna Lok Sabha seat, but switched to Jana Sangh in 1967. She played a significant role in nurturing the saffron citadel in Gwalior region and in 1971, Jana Sangh defied the Indira Gandhi-wave and won three seats — Vijayaraje from Bhind, Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Gwalior and Vijayaraje’s son Madhavrao Scindia from Guna. The Scindia family plunged headlong into state politics and Madhavrao Scindia became a Lok Sabha member at the age of 26. But the saffron love didn’t last long for him, and he chose to part ways with Jana Sangh and his mother after Emergency in 1977. In the 1980 elections, he switched allegiance to Congress and won from Guna a third time, and served as Union minister in the Congress government. Madhavrao’s son Jyotiraditya Scindia carried on with his legacy. In the meantime, Vijayaraje’s daughters Vasundhara Raje and Yashodhara Raje also entered politics. In 1984, Vasundhara Raje joined as a member of the BJP national executive. She was also elected to the 8th Rajasthan assembly from Dholpur. Vasundhara’s son Dushyant is a BJP MP from Jhalawar constituency in Rajasthan.Yashodhara moved to New Orleans, USA, in 1977 after marrying Sidharth Bhansali, a cardiologist. She has three children, none of who joined politics. Yashodhara returned to India in 1994 and went into formal politics by contesting the MP assembly election in 1998 as a BJP member. A five-time MLA, she was a minister in the erstwhile Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.Jyotiraditya chose to remain in Congress. After his father’s death in a plane crash in 2001, Guna Lok Sabha constituency fell vacant. Jyotiraditya contested the bypoll in 2002 and won by a record margin of 4.5 lakh votes. Jyotiraditya won the next three LS polls from Guna but suffered a shock defeat in 2019 at the hands of his long-time aide Krishna Pal Singh Yadav.It was a double blow to Jyotiraditya, having lost out in the race for chief ministership only six months earlier. Despite playing a significant role in Congress’s victory in the 2018 assembly polls, Jyotiraditya could get the support of only 23 MLAs. The then AICC chief Rahul Gandhi picked Kamal Nath for his experience, and indicated that Scindia’s time would come. After the Lok Sabha defeat, Jyotiraditya felt sidelined by the state Congress leadership although six MLAs from his faction were made ministers in the Kamal Nath cabinet. In January 2019, Scindia sparked a buzz by calling on former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan one evening. Both leaders dismissed speculation and called it a “courtesy meet”. In September 2019, rumours went around that he could switch to BJP. Scindia clarified that he has no intention of leaving Congress and dubbed the reports as “rumour-mongering by vested interests”. Then, in November, he dropped all references to his official posts in Congress from his twitter profile.He played it down, saying he had changed the profile a month earlier, and chose to identify himself as a “public servant and cricket enthusiast”.As of March 9, when 17 MLAs from his faction went missing, his Twitter profile said the same.