Civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia is seeking votes from the people of Guna for the first time on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket. He lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to his former aide KP Singh Yadav by a margin of 1,20,000 votes. Soon after, the former United Progressive Alliance (UPA) minister quit the Congress, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, and brought down the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh.
This election, Scindia is BJP’s Guna candidate and against him is a former party man Rao Yadvendra Singh who fought and lost the 2023 assembly elections on a Congress ticket.
Guna will go to the polls in the third phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections on May 7, along with eight other parliamentary seats in Madhya Pradesh.
So is Guna seeing the election of 2024 as a battle of turncoats? Is the royal family’s legacy working to Scindia’s advantage? We caught up with “Maharaj”, as the BJP leader is known in the Gwalior, Guna, Shivpuri belt, on the campaign trail. Edited excerpts:
What is the election mood? How are you sensing the mood of the voter?
That is a question for you to answer. A candidate will always be biased and say that the mood is in his or her favour. You should give me an honest picture of the voters’ mood.
Let me rephrase the question. For decades you have asked voters to stamp on the panja (Congress’s hand symbol) to vote for you. Now, how do you convince them to press kamal (BJP’s lotus symbol)? Are you worried about old associations that might be imprinted on voters’ minds?
Not at all. People have understood very clearly what has happened in the last four years. And I mentioned it on the manch as well (at an election meeting)…the government which came with the mandate of the people, to serve people, soon became all about vote, note, and kursi. At that point when they told me ‘sadak per aa jao’…I saw pradhan mantri jis leadership and decided to serve under it.
So I brought the Congress government down and ensured the BJP government was formed to serve the people. And people have understood this.
Were you also disenchanted? Today, the Congress is repeatedly talking about caste census. Caste qualifications have played a role in their candidate selection against you also it seems.
A country which is transporting itself to become a Vishwaguru under PM’s leadership, in that country, Congress’s agenda is caste politics? Congress wants to take the country back a thousand years.
Congress has become a party that is bankrupt of ideas, ideology, leadership, and a party that doesn’t coexist with the idea of India anymore.
Do you find any resonance of the caste census issue that the Congress is repeatedly raising?
The Congress party that opposed the caste census, opposed the Mandal Commission, and it was a non-Congress government that brought in the Mandal Commission, today is talking in a forked tongue about the caste census. It needs to look at itself in the mirror.
The step that you took about bringing down the Kamal Nath government…You don’t sense any negative sentiment from voters around that move? What is the message you are taking to voters on this issue?
I don’t need to give any message anymore because my step has been validated, first in the by-elections of 2020, then in the assembly elections of 2023. People have believed that it was the right decision, which is why in the by-elections we won almost all the erstwhile Congress seats. And then in the 2023 Vidhan Sabha elections when everyone said the Congress would form the government, it got wiped out. The BJP got 163 seats out of 230. The people have spoken.
Is it the charisma of ‘Maharaj’ and Modi that is working to woo the voters of Guna?
I don’t know who you are talking about because my name is Jyotiraditya Scindia. Very clearly Modi Ji’s vision for development, which has translated into this electric relationship between him and the people of this country, and that is what you are seeing the manifestation of, even here. There is certainly a relationship between me and this region. It is a relationship we have forged from the core of our hearts, a relationship based on development and progress, a relationship based on truth, patience, and perseverance, and that is what I treasure most in my life.
You must have seen the headlines that the Congress manifesto is generating. There are allegations of redistribution of wealth and favouring minorities. Was this the Congress in your time also?
Why are we talking about a party which as I mentioned is taking India back in time as opposed to taking India ahead? Today’s India is about Prime Minister’s leadership, about entrepreneurship, about new job and wealth creation, about new economic strength, about growing on the world stage. Today the world is talking about India. And the Congress is talking about taking India back 500 years. The people will denounce them once again on May 7, and once again when the boxes open on June 4.
These people don’t even believe in EVMs. They want to go back to postal ballot when the whole world is looking at our EVM technology and wants to adopt it. They don’t even believe in the Supreme Court anymore. They don’t believe in anything. I might be stepping over my boundaries, but I don’t know whether they even believe in themselves.
What about their indecisiveness with Amethi and Raebareli?
(Smiles) I am busy in my own state.
So what is Mr Scindia getting for the people of Guna, as civil aviation minister?
As civil aviation minister, yes, we have sanctioned an airport in Guna. I have built the largest airport in Madhya Pradesh in record time of 16 months in Gwalior. Two and a half lakh square feet, Rs 500 crore, shilanyas was done in October 2022, inauguration by PM in March 2024, built in the shortest timespan in independent India…Such a large airport. So development all around. Whether as civil aviation minister or the roads that you are travelling on, where your camera is not shaking, these are all built by me. There were pagdandis here, no roads. This was known as a BIMARU state, as the Shriman Bantadhar state. Look at the transformation that has happened.
My final question is, what is Mr Scindia’s plan if Guna votes for him?
Development, development, and development.
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