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Only the scion of the Scindias is in the battle this time

For the second time in the last two-and-a-half decades, only one member of the Scindia family, rulers of the erstwhile Gwalior state, is contesting the elections in Madhya Pradesh.

With senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijayaraje Scindia opting out of the contest on health grounds, Congress General Secretary Madhavrao Scindia is the only member of this family seeking election this time.

Vijayaraje Scindia had won eight out of the nine parliamentary elections she contested in her 42-year-long political career while Madhavrao Scindia had been elected to the Lok Sabha eight times consecutively since 1971.

Vijayaraje Scindia won the Guna seat in 1957 and the Gwalior seat in 1962 on a Congress ticket. However, in the 1967 elections, she contested the same constituency as an independent, defeating Devraj Jadhav of the Congress.

Later, she changed her constituency as well as her party. In 1971, she contested for the Bhind seat as part of the Jan Sangh. In her absence from Guna, Madhavrao Scindia contested from there for the first time as a Jan Sangh candidate. Both of them won the elections.

During the 1977 anti-Congress wave, Vijayaraje Scindia did not contest the election but her son won the Guna seat -- as an independent this time. In the 1980 general elections, Vijayaraje Scindia moved to the Raibareli seat in Uttar Pradesh to take on former prime minister Indira Gandhi. She lost her security deposit. However, Madhavrao Scindia retained the Guna seat for the Congress.

In the 1984 polls, the Congress sprang a surprise by fielding Madhavrao Scindia against Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Gwalior constituency. Vajpayee lost the elections.

In the absence of Vijayaraje Scindia, her daughter Vasundhara Raje entered the fray from Bhind constituency. Later, Vijayaraje Scindia and Madhavrao Scindia finally settled into the Guna and Gwalior seats respectively. They have represented these seats four times each since 1989.

However, in 1996, Madhavrao won the election as a candidate of the Madhya Pradesh Vikas Congress, which he floated after the Congress denied him a ticket because his name figured in the controversial hawala scam. As Vijayaraje Scindia has expressed her inability to contest elections on health grounds this time, Madhavrao Scindia shifted to the Guna seat, which he has won thrice earlier.

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