Disgruntled Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia joined the BJP in the presence of BJP chief J.P. Nadda on Wednesday afternoon. Amid a media frenzy, Scindia was accompanied from his home to the BJP headquarters in Delhi by saffron party leader Syed Zafar Islam.
Scindia was formally inducted into the BJP by Nadda. It had been speculated on Tuesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah would be present when Scindia joined the BJP.
The Madhya Pradesh royal scion had resigned on Tuesday, along with at least 22 loyal Congress MLAs, reducing the ruling party in the state to a minority. He is likely to be sent to Rajya Sabha, sources said, adding that he may get a berth in the Union cabinet if his revolt against the Congress leads to the fall of the Madhya Pradesh government, as the BJP expects. While the Congress, which was voted to power in the state after 15 years in 2018, has 114 MLAs, the BJP has 107 legislators in the 230-member assembly. Four Independent MLAs, two lawmakers of the Bahujan Samaj Party and one Samajwadi Party legislator are supporting the Congress-led government. The ruling majority is tiny.
However, the biggest question in this transition is his ability to topple the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh. Though several Congress leaders stood up for Scindia in the political drama that unfolded on Monday, the number of Congress MLAs who will follow him to the BJP remains to be seen. Former chief minister Digvijaya Singh told mediapersons on Wednesday that 13 of the 22 MLAs who submitted resignations had "assured" they would return to the Congress.
Peeved with his marginalisation in the party, and ongoing tiffs with the Chief Minister Kamal Nath, Scindia met Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday, and then the two leaders went to the prime minister's residence where they held talks for over an hour. Soon after his meeting with Modi, the former Union minister tendered his resignation to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, saying it was now time for him to move on.
Scindia took the decision to sever his ties with the Congress on the day of his father Madhavrao Scindia's 75th birth anniversary. Simultaneously, the Congress also announced his expulsion for "anti-party activities" as the crisis looming over the Madhya Pradesh government led by Chief Minister Kamal Nath deepened.
There was no official word on what transpired in Scindia's meeting with Modi, but BJP sources asserted that the decision of the party's top two leaders to hold long deliberations with him, the scion of the erstwhile Gwalior royal family, with considerable influence in the region, underlined the importance they attach to him.
The 49-year-old leader was long upset with the Congress as he believes that Nath and Digvijaya Singh, another party satrap in the state, were working in tandem to marginalise him. At least 22 Congress MLAs, many of whom loyal to him, have resigned to reduce the ruling Congress in the state to a minority.
As many as 17 MLAs close to Scindia went incommunicado on Monday, with most of them believed to be camping in Bengaluru. Election for three Rajya Sabha seats from the state is slated for March 26. Both the Congress and the BJP are sure to win one seat each, and the changing dynamics in the state politics means that the saffron party may eye to win the third seat.
The Scindia family is one of the most distinguished political dynasties in the country and Jyotiraditya Scindia's decision has snapped its decades long ties with the Congress. His two aunts, Vasundhara Raje and Yashodhara Raje, are already in the BJP with the former serving as the Rajasthan chief minister for 10 years. His father Madhavrao Scindia had also started his political innings as an MP of the Jana Sangh, the earlier avatar of the BJP, in 1971 but joined the Congress later. His grandmother Vijayaraje Scindia had begun his political career as a Congress MP in 1957 and then joined the Swatantrata Party, now defunct, before she moved to the Jana Sangh and emerged as a leading hardline ideologue of the party. Jyotiraditya Scindia had been representing Guna in Lok Sabha since 2002 after his father's death in a plane crash, but lost the family's pocket borough in 2019 to his BJP rival.
-Inputs from PTI
