Lok Sabha Polls 2024 | Face-off: Jyotiraditya Scindia vs Rao Yadvendra Yadav

The two are contesting from Madhya Pradesh's Guna constituency.

The 53-year-old politician is the grandson of one of the BJP founders, Vijaya Raje Scindia, and son of former Union minister late Madhavrao Scindia. Members of the erstwhile royal family of Gwalior, the Scindias have moved effortlessly between parties when it comes to fighting electoral battles on their home ground.

It was a rare electoral shock for the former royals when Jyotiraditya was defeated in 2019 by the BJP candidate and his old loyalist, K P Yadav.

Jyotiraditya has represented the Guna seat four times between 2002 and 2014, including after winning a bypoll. The Union minister’s grandmother, Vijaya Raje, contested her first poll from the seat in 1957 on a Congress ticket and won. She contested as the Swatantra Party nominee in 1967 then from the BJP in 1989.

His father Madhavrao contested his first poll from Guna on a Bharatiya Jan Sangh ticket in 1971 and fought his last poll in 1999 as the Congress nominee.

Rao Yadvendra Yadav was the BJP’s Ashok Nagar district panchayat president before he moved to the Congress ahead of the 2023 Assembly polls. His show of strength through a convoy of more than 500 vehicles and 5,000 local supporters from Ashok Nagar to Bhopal was a topic of discussion at the time of him joining the Congress.

Yadav subsequently contested from the Mungaoli Assembly seat, losing by a narrow margin to the BJP’s candidate. He is the son of late Jan Sangh leader and three-time former BJP MLA, Deshraj Singh Yadav.

At present, he is the Congress party’s Guna district president. Yadav left the BJP accusing Jyotiraditya of discriminating against old party workers. The grand old party has fielded him to cash in on the Yadav vote bank in the constituency. The seat has around four lakh Yadavs, whose votes proved crucial for the BJP’s victory here in 2019. However, not all Congress leaders are happy with the party fielding Yadav from Guna.

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