Scindia’s switch

Widely touted as a potential non-Gandhi president of the Congress, Jyotiraditya Scindia has switched over to the BJP camp. His resignation from the Grand Old Party coincided with the 75th birth anniversary of his father, the late Madhavrao Scindia. The significance of the timing is not lost on anyone, considering the track record of the erstwhile royal family in shifting loyalties. The charismatic Madhavrao began his political innings in 1971 with the Jana Sangh, the BJP’s precursor. During an eventful career that ended with his untimely death, he crossed over to the Congress in 1980, quit the party in 1996 to float his own outfit, but had a change of heart and returned to the fold. Madhavrao’s mother Vijaya Raje Scindia moved on from the Congress to the Jana Sangh in 1967 and later played a key role in founding the BJP. Going by this legacy, it’s a ghar wapsi of sorts for Jyotiraditya.

The junior Scindia’s move is another setback for the beleaguered Congress, which has done precious little to pick up the pieces after being routed in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The party did well to wrest Madhya Pradesh from the BJP in December 2018, but it failed to give a prominent place to Jyotiraditya in state politics. The fact that he suffered a shock defeat last year from the Guna parliamentary seat, his family’s pocket borough, further undermined his position within the party, eventually prompting him to take a drastic decision.

With the Congress high command in disarray, the BJP has been chipping away at the party’s gains in the states. The crisis in MP is far from over, even though Jyotiraditya doesn’t seem to have done enough damage as of now to bring down the Kamal Nath government. The Congress is also struggling to handle assertive young leaders in other party-ruled states, be it Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan or Navjot Singh Sidhu in Punjab. The bitter tussle between the old guard and the young brigade has brought the party to its knees. And the BJP finally has something to gloat over after the poll reversals in Jharkhand and Delhi.

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