It should not come as a surprise that union minister of state for power and Madhya Pradesh Congress campaign committee chairman Jyotiraditya Scindia is seen as a mascot by the local Congress workers. Gwalior is seen as the pocket borough of the erstwhile royal family, and a large number of people still refer to him as “Maharaj”. They say he is the next CM, and that, for once, the Congress has taken the right call.
There is an uncharacteristic energy and enthusiasm as party workers in Gandhi Bhavan, the party office, explain how Jyotiraditya will bring the Congress back to power in the state after a decade.
Ashok Jain, the district party general secretary, says the party would win in all the 34 seats in the Gwalior-Chambal belt. This is no doubt an overstatement. But the context of Congress politics in the state explains the apparent euphoria among the workers. They say that Congress the is not only weak but zero before Scindia was named the campaign committee chief.
The workers say that after taking over as power minister, Jyotiraditya allocated projects worth crores of rupees in the region and that is going to pay dividends.
Dr Darshan Singh, district Congress president, known to be a Jyotiraditya loyalist, is more cautious than the workers. Asked about how many seats the party hopes to win post-Scindia appointment, he said the Congress would improve its tally.
Even Congress men admit that chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is popular among the people because of his sensitivity to the problems of the poor, but they think it is the corrupt BJP ministers and MLAs who pose a problem.
Dr SS Sikarwar of the political science department at Gwalior’s Jiwaji University says Scindia’s induction has turned the election into an interesting contest while it was a one-party race before that with no one to challenge the BJP.
The BJP says Jyotiraditya would make no difference to the electoral outcome. Says district BJP president Ved Prakash Sharma, “Scindia’s presence has no impact. The people who will damage the BJP’s prospects in Gwalior will be our own rebel candidates.”
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