Jyotiraditya Scindia and Yashodhara Raje Scindia

Bhopal, March 2: Jyotiraditya Scindia seems to have put his politics above his family, but his party leaders are far from convinced.

The Congress MP from Guna was perceived as reluctant to campaign for party nominee Ashok Singh because his aunt Yashodhara Raje Scindia is the BJP candidate for the Gwalior Lok Sabha bypoll.

Jyotiraditya addressed a series of meetings yesterday and today, but his thrust on the “legacy of the Scindias” has left his Congress colleagues worried. He harped on the “long emotional bonding” between the people of Gwalior and the palace. He said the Scindias had taken care of Gwalior for the last 250 years and would continue to do so.

“It is a clever ploy to please AICC chief Sonia Gandhi. But what is the point in such a campaign when you glorify the Scindia family and a princess is in the fray? The voters are getting the message that the Scindias are great when the Congress is fighting against the palace,” said a state party general secretary.

Breaking a Scindia tradition, Jyotiraditya has begun campaigning against a family member, but he has refrained from naming his aunt in any of his rallies, leave alone attacking her.

The young MP’s initial absence from the campaign had given credence to the belief that members of the royal family did not take on each other in public.

The only exception was the 1984 Lok Sabha election, when the Congress’s Madhavrao Scindia — Jyotiraditya’s father — defeated Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP nominee supported by his mother, Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindia.

In Congress circles, Jyotiraditya’s presence in the campaign for Thursday’s bypoll is seen as his attempt to upstage arch-rival Digvijay Singh, a Congress general secretary.

Singh’s supporters had alleged that Jyotiraditya was staying away from the campaign to “help out” Yashodhara. Today, at the state party office in Bhopal, the buzz was that Jyotiraditya had succeeded in blunting the criticism, but his speeches were hurting the Congress’s chances.

A state party general secretary said Jyotiraditya was echoing key BJP campaigners like Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia — also his aunt — and her Madhya Pradesh counterpart Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who urged voters to opt for Yashodhara to honour the late Rajmata.