Madhya Pradesh political crisis: Jyotiraditya Scindia formally joins BJP in presence of JP Nadda

File image: Jyotiraditya Scindia

A day after quitting the Indian National Congress, senior leader and former Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on March 11.

BJP National President JP Nadda and Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, among others, were present at the induction ceremony at the party headquarters.

Scindia had tendered his resignation from the party on March 10, stating that he wanted to “look ahead at a fresh start” to “reflect and realise” the aspirations of "my people and my workers".

The development came right after Scindia’s meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

The Congress, however, said it had expelled Scindia for “anti-party activities”.

In a day of rapid political developments, 21 MLAs — reportedly close to Scindia — had also tendered their resignations to the Madhya Pradesh Governor.

The development comes amid high political drama in the state ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections on March 26 and the Budget session of the Assembly scheduled for March 16.

Earlier on March 9, 17 MLAs — reportedly loyal to Scindia — were flown to Bengaluru, Karnataka where the BJP is in power.

Reports then suggested that this was a part of the internal tussle within the Congress' Madhya Pradesh unit, where tensions between the Scindia and Chief Minister Kamal Nath faction had been simmering ever since the formation of the government in 2018.

The Congress holds a thin majority in the 230-member Assembly with its own 114 MLAs and support of two legislators of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), one of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and four Independents.

The BJP has 107 legislators while two seats are vacant.

Also read: Ahead of floor test in Madhya Pradesh Assembly, here’s how numbers stack up for the two sides

On March 3, in a late-night political drama in the state, the Congress claimed that the opposition BJP took eight MLAs to a hotel in Haryana as part of a conspiracy to topple the Kamal Nath-led government.

On March 5 morning, the Congress held a press conference in New Delhi - in which it claimed that the BJP 'abducted 14 MLAs' to bring down its government in Madhya Pradesh.

However, the BJP attributed the entire political drama to the internal bickering of the Congress, saying that the saffron party has nothing to do with this.

Who is Scindia? Why is this development important?

Rumblings within the state Congress unit were on for some time before the crisis blew out in the open, with legislators and ministers loyal to Scindia indicating that the Kamal Nath government will "face crisis" if he is neglected and another saying that he will be the first to support Scindia's new party, if he decides to float it.

Jyotiraditya is the scion of the Scindia family of Marathas which ruled the Gwalior state in pre-independent central-India.

His grandmother Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindia was once a prominent figure in the Jana Sangh.

Jyotiraditya was born on January 1, 1971 in Bombay (now Mumbai) to Madhavrao Scindia and Madhavi Raje Scindia. He studied at Campion School in the city before being sent to The Doon School in Dehradun.

He pursued Economics at the Harvard University from where he graduated in 1993. In 2001, he completed his Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He also roughed it out with various jobs with Merryl Lynch; the UN in New York; Morgan Stanley in New York, Hong Kong and Mumbai.

He jumped into politics after his father’s demise. In 2002, he won the bypoll for the Guna Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh, earlier held by his father. He was re-elected from Guna in the 2004 Lok Sabha election.

In 2007, Jyotiraditya was inducted into the Manmohan Singh cabinet as the Minister of State (MoS) for Communications and Information Technology. He was re-elected in 2009 and appointed as the MoS for Commerce and Industry. In 2012, he was made MoS for Power with independent charge.

Scindia, during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, retained his constituency of Guna but could not manage the feat during the 2019 Parliamentary polls, losing out to a former aide.