Jyotiraditya Scindia is an Indian politician, and a descendant of the famous Scindia royal family which ruled Gwalior. He was a candidate of the Indian National Congress and Member of Parliament. He has now joined the Bharatiya Janata party, and is a candidate representing BJP in 2020 in Indian Rajya Sabha.
2018 Elections
The Congress formed the government with the support from Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi party in November 2018 elections and that is when the trouble started in the party in Madhya Pradesh.
The Congress could not keep up its promises made to Jyotiraditya Scindia umpteen number of times. The gap between Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamal Nath and the dominance of Digvijay Singh, were few factors behind Scindia’s decision to leave this age old party, and embrace BJP. The Congress had won 115 seats in the 230-member House and the BJP 108, ending BJP’s 15-year reign in the state. The credit of Congress’s best performance in the assembly elections had to go to Scindia, but he was denied the post of a Chief Minister. He accepted it with grace.
Assurances given to Scindia
Scindia was given several assurances before giving the post of the Chief Minister to Kamal Nath. The first assurance was that his nominee would be appointed the deputy Chief Minister by the time of the swearing-in ceremony. Later Kamal Nath insisted that there should be two deputy chief ministers, which would include one of his nominees. Though Scindia was upset he decided to abide by the party’s discipline. The Kamal Nath cabinet was formed with 28 ministers in the state. Jyotiraditya Scindia was assured that a good proportion of his supporters would be appointed as ministers in the Nath government, but only seven were appointed ministers and all the others were those who were loyal to the CM and Congress senior leader Digvijay Singh.
New Developments
Scindia had agreed to the new developments but none of the seven ministers were given good posts or importance. The distance grew within the leaders when even the developmental requests of Mr. Scindia fell on deaf ears and they were not taken seriously. Things became bitter when the meeting at the state congress head quarters was not given any importance and all his pictures were replaced with banners of Nath’s photograph, whereas all the campaign pictures had both Nath and Scindia beside each other.
Scindia sidelined
Soon after the meeting, Jyotiraditya Scindia was made the General secretary in-charge of western Uttar Pradesh whereas Priyanka Gandhi Vadra of eastern Uttar Pradesh. He understood that it was an attempt to sideline him from the state politics and was made the in- charge to a region with which he had very little connect and congress was very weak.In spite of all the hitches, Scindia campaigned aggressively in the Lok Sabha polls in UP and contested the Guna Lok Sabha seat but lost the seat. Scindia was marginalized gradually. He wasn’t made the head the party’s state unit too.
The Final straw
Scindia waited for months for clarity on the leadership issue, but always felt the heat of opposition from Nath and Digvijaya. He was further disappointed by the refusal of the party high command to talk in favour of him. Scindia’s bete noire, Ashok Singh, from Gwalior, was appointed as the administrator of Apex Bank [the apex cooperative bank, by Kamal Nath in July last year. Many other issues created a breach between Scindia and Kamal Nath, leading Scindia to take the utmost step of leaving the party and joining BJP.
