Bhopal, Aug 8 (IANS) Cabinet and party colleagues till 2020, and now two political rivals – Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and Congress Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh – on Friday walked together during an event in Bhopal.
The occasion was to inaugurate a co-educational British boarding school in Bhopal.
As Singh, one of the guests, arrived close to the stage at the venue, Union Minister Scindia received him, and the duo walked together.
Political rivalry between Singh, an erstwhile member of the Raghogarh principality, which was once a part of the former Gwalior princely state, and the Scindia family has a long history, as these two erstwhile royal families had a deep-rooted connection.
Political rivalry between the two royal families intensified during Digvijaya Singh’s tenure as the chief minister from 1993 to 2003, while Jyotiraditya Scindia’s father and former Union Minister, Madhavrao Scindia, remained a factional leader in Madhya Pradesh’s politics.
In 2002, Jyotiraditya Scindia entered the political scene by contesting for the Guna Lok Sabha seat after the tragic death of his father and former Union minister, Madhavrao Scindia, in a plane crash.
Digvijaya Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia, who established themselves in national politics during the ex-PM Manmohan Singh-led UPA government, worked together for years, until March 2020.
The political landscape in Madhya Pradesh witnessed a change after the Congress formed the government under Kamal Nath’s leadership with the support of various parties in 2018.
However, the government collapsed after 15 months when a group of Congress MLAs, most of them loyal to Jyotiraditya Scindia, defected to the BJP in March 2020.
Jyotiraditya Scindia, who had lost his family bastion Guna in 2019, remained a Union Minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet as a Rajya Sabha member.
In 2024, he won the Guna Lok Sabha seat and became a Union Minister again.
On the other hand, Digvijaya Singh, who contested two back-to-back Lok Sabha elections – from Bhopal in 2019 and from Rajgarh in 2024 – lost both.
–IANS
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