BHOPAL: With just 13 days left for the February 24 by-election to Kolaras Assembly seat in Madhya Pradesh, what was seen as a battle between Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and former Union minister and Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia has now become a contest between two members of the erstwhile royal family of Gwalior.
Though Jyotiraditya and his aunt Yashodhara Raje Scindia—who is Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs in the Chouhan Cabinet—are not contesting the bypoll, they are star campaigners for their parties for the seat that has over 2.30 lakh voters.
While local leaders and workers of both parties say the bypoll has become a symbolic contest between the aunt and the nephew, Yashodhara played it down. “The contest is between the BJP and the Congress and nothing else,” she told journalists.
State Congress spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi said the Scindia versus Scindia battle is being portrayed by the BJP, which is staring at defeat.
Though the Congress has a long list of star campaigners—which includes party president Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, besides prominent state leaders—four-time MP from Guna Jyotiraditya is the face of the campaign for Kolaras.
Right from picking Mahendra Singh Yadav (son of MLA Ram Singh Yadav, who died in October 2017 necessitating the bypoll) as the candidate for Kolaras, to strategising for the bypoll, Jyotiraditya has been deciding every detail of the campaign.
Both Mungaoli (Ashok Nagar) and Kolaras (Shivpuri), where the Assembly bypolls are to be held, are part of Guna, Jyotiraditya’s bastion.
Yashodhara, MLA from Shivpuri of Shivpuri district, who earlier refrained from campaigning in Kolaras, is now going from home-to-home to connect with voters.
The ruling BJP, which was on a sticky wicket owing to Jyotiraditya’s popularity, is now finding itself back in the contest.
According to a BJP leader in Shivpuri district, all top BJP leaders from the state—Chouhan, national vice-president and Rajya Sabha member Prabhat Jha, Union minister and Gwalior MP Narendra Singh Tomar, besides state ministers Narottam Mishra, Vishwas Sarang and Rustam Singh—had been campaigning in Kolaras much before the poll dates were announced, but were making little headway.
“Jyotiraditya’s popularity was proving a major hurdle for the BJP, so they roped in Yashodhara,” the BJP leader said.
“In Yashodhara, the people of Kolaras see the image of her mother and former Guna MP Vijaya Raje, because of which she is as popular there as her nephew. Her door-to-door campaign, which starts in the morning and continues till late evening, is also driving more voters in favour of our candidate Devendra Jain,” Shivpuri district BJP president Sushil Raghuvanshi told The Sunday Standard.
Yashodhara, who is upset over the commerce and industry portfolio being snatched from her in June 2016 and Chouhan’s adverse comments about the Scindia family while campaigning for Ater Assembly bypoll last year, took the lead in campaigning only on Jain’s request. In 1993, Jain had won the Shivpuri Assembly seat largely with her backing.