Bhopal, (Samajweekly) The BJP on Saturday fielded Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia from his family bastion Guna in the Gwalior-Chambal region of Madhya Pradesh for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Scindia, who’s at present a Rajya Sabha MP, will contest the Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket for the first time. He had contested the last general elections (2019) on a Congress ticket from Guna, but had lost against BJP’s K.P. Yadav. A year later, Scindia shifted to the BJP and was elected to the Upper House.
Scindia’s shift to the BJP in March 2020 had triggered a major political crisis within the Congress, as the Kamal Nath-led government in Madhya Pradesh collapsed after 22 Congress MLAs, said to be Scindia loyalists, joined the BJP.
Scindia (53) started his political career with the Congress after his father and former Union minister Madhavrao Scindia died in a plane crash in Uttar Pradesh in 2001.
He contested the bypoll from Guna and won against BJP candidate Desh Raj Singh Yadav by a margin of approximately 45,000 votes.
He was re-elected in 2004, and was introduced to the Union Council of Ministers in 2007 as Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology.
He won a third consecutive term from his family bastion in 2009, and became the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry in then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Cabinet.
He was elected as a Lok Sabha MP for the fourth consecutive term in 2014, before losing the election five years later.
