GUWAHATI: Former Congress strongman, Jyotiraditya Scindia joins Bharatiya Janata Party in the presence of BJP President JP Nadda at party headquarters on March 11.
Jyotiraditya Scindia has done what was predicted. He has joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in a high profile ceremony befitting of being welcomed back into the original fold of his illustrious family’s political pitch. While the Scindia’s have always been on the saffron path, it was Jyotiraditya’s father Madhavrao who had deviated from the beaten track on which his son has traversed for long 18 years until circumstances were created where he had to re-adopt the ideologies that his grandmother Vijayraje Scindia had formulated along with members of the Jana Sangh in the late 1960s.
It is worth mentioning here that such was the significant role that was played by Vijayraje that the Jana Sangh defied the massive Indira Gandhi wave of 1971 to win three seats from the Gwalior region. Ever since, except for Madharao’s aberration is joining the Congress post the Emergency, the Scindia family has always nurtured the saffron citadel. Jyotiraditya’s aunts Yashodhara Raje (who is a 5-time MLA in Madhya Pradesh) and Vasundhara Raje (who has remained the chief minister of Rajasthan) are currently top and influential leaders of the BJP.
The extended Scindia family’s roots are too deep in the saffron ideology and Jyotiraditya finally joining the BJP is somewhat of an instance of those deep roots beckoning him. The circumstances and the stumbling blocks within the Congress perhaps hastened the decision. His return to his constituency (Guna, from which he got a shock defeat in the 2019 LS elections) might trigger celebrations similar to the ones seen when Himanta Biswa Sarma returned from New Delhi after he had joined the BJP.
It is to be mentioned that with Scindia's exit from Congress was followed by resignation letters by about 22 MLAs who had been sequestered in karnataka. However the resignation letters was ent to the Governor and not the assembly speaker.