Jyotiraditya: New rival

Gwalior, Aug. 22: The royal property battle between the aunts and nephew has drawn an old Scindia loyalist into the fray.

Sardar Sambhajirao Angre, Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia’s confidant and family retainer, has challenged Jyotiraditya Scindia’s claim to the prime properties in Mumbai that are at the centre of the dispute.

Angre claims the properties were part of the Rajmata’s “streedhan (personal wealth)”, and therefore, Gwalior maharaja Jyotiraditya ? also a Congress MP ? has no claim over it.

“The boy is going to lose badly. He must understand a simple thing. These properties belong to charitable public trusts so he has no locus standi,” Angre said today.

“In fact, there is a bigger story,” the family retainer claimed. “Even his occupation of Jai Vilas Palace in Gwalior is subject to scrutiny.” This palace, too, belongs to four public trusts set up by Scindias, Angre said. “Is he paying rent?” the 84-year-old RSS ideologue questioned.

Jai Vilas Palace houses the residential quarters of Jyotiraditya and by conservative estimate employs a staff of nearly 300 people.

The legal tug-of-war over the properties is between the three daughters of the Rajmata ? Vasundhara Raje (the Rajasthan chief minister), Usharaje and Yashodhara ? on one side and her grandson Jyotiraditya on the other.

Of the three disputed properties, one building is on Mumbai’s posh Peddar Road. Called the Vasundhara Building, the cluster of 12 apartments is spread out over 12,000 square feet. Two bungalows, Vijay Vilas and Devonshire, on Warden Road are also locked in the dispute.

In 1966, Vasundhara Building, then worth over Rs 80 crore, and the bungalows were transferred to two public trusts set up by the Rajmata. They are now worth several hundred crores.

The Rajmata had named her three daughters the trustees. But in 2001, days before his death, Madhavrao Scindia, Vijayaraje’s son, in his capacity as the maharaja of Gwalior named Jyotiraditya a trustee.

The case is now before Maharashtra’s charity commission.

Angre said the Rajmata had set up trusts to manage the properties that he claimed were from her individual wealth. “Madhavrao or Jyotiraditya have nothing to do with it. Madhavrao’s act of appointing his son as trustee was illegal. They can not have a claim.”

He said these trusts were different from the 14 other trusts in Gwalior which came into being as part of the division of property between Madhavrao and his mother many years ago.

The bitterness between Madhavrao and the Rajmata was so intense that she did not want her son to light her pyre.

Madhavrao, however, performed the last rites as his mother’s will was made known 14 days after her death.

The Rajmata had told Angre’s wife to hand over the envelope to him after her death. But the family retainer came to know of his designation as one of the executors only after he opened the envelope following the cremation.

Asked why the envelope was not opened immediately after the Vijayaraje’s death as she had desired, Angre said: “It’s never done. It is against human conduct.”

“I got a copy of the will in my hands only after the cremation,” he said.

Recently, Jyotiraditya suffered a setback when he lost a palatial kothi, in the heart of the Gwalior royal estate, to Angre and his daughter Chitralekha.

Angre said he was prepared for an out-of-court settlement with the Gwalior scion “but to do that, he (Jyotiraditya) must call on me,” he said, claiming that he was just a “lease holder” of Heervan Kothi. “I would like to distribute it justly among Rajmata’s three daughters and Jyotiraditya.”

The Scindias migrated from Satara to Gwalior some 300 years ago. They went on to become one of the four most illustrious Indian royal families (the others being those of Baroda, Hyderabad and Mysore) to merit a 19-gun salute in the British Raj.