With BJP, Ram, and nationalism, Scindia family looks to regain lost fortress

Amidst changing party loyalties and caste equations, the BJP’s Jyotiraditya Scindia is leveraging his family’s ‘royal’ connections with the people of Guna

“Scindia, oh Scindia dil se; sochna ab kya hai, chunein Modi phir se.” Roughly translated, the lyrics say: “Scindia, from the heart; what’s there to think about, let’s choose Prime Minister Narendra Modi once again.” Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and his supporters dance to the song after he finishes his address at Athai Kheda village in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna Lok Sabha constituency. 

More than four years after he made the switch from the Congress, Mr. Scindia is contesting his first Lok Sabha election with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and hopes to reclaim his family’s lost bastion of Guna. 

Mr. Scindia’s grandmother Vijayaraje Scindia first won the Guna seat in 1957 on a Congress ticket. She later joined the Bharatiya Jan Sangh and eventually, the BJP. She went on to represent the constituency for five more terms, including once with the Swatantra Party in 1967 and then four consecutive terms with the BJP between 1989 and 1998 with the BJP. 

Her son — and Mr. Scindia’s father — Madhavrao Scindia first won from here in 1971 with the Bharatiya Jan Sangh but later joined the Congress. He also represented Guna for four terms. Mr. Scindia himself was a Congress MP from Guna for four terms, starting from the 2002 bypolls following his father’s death. 

Also read |Raja, Maharaja and Mama feature in M.P.’s battle royale

Though their parties kept changing, and mother and son remained political rivals, the constituency remained in the family since 1989 until the BJP defeated Mr. Scindia in 2019. Fielding a former Scindia family loyalist K.P. Yadav, the BJP leveraged its social engineering and Mr. Modi’s popularity to beat the scion of Gwalior’s erstwhile royal family. 

The Guna Lok Sabha constituency, which will vote in the third phase on May 7, consists of eight Assembly seats spread across three districts — Guna, Ashok Nagar, and Shivpuri. The BJP had won six of them in the 2023 Assembly election, with Mr. Scindia running an extensive campaign for the party.