Rajmata's daughter leaves BJP meeting in a huff

Madhya Pradesh Sports Minister Yashodhara Raje Scindia on Friday left an important BJP meeting in a huff after she found that her mother, the late Vijaya Raje Scindia's photograph was not put up in the meeting venue.

The dowager of the erstwhile princely state of Gwalior was one of the founder members of the BJP. One of her three daughters, Vasundhara Raje, is Rajasthan chief minister and grandson, Jyotiraditya Scindia, MP, is state Congress campaign committee chief for the forthcoming assembly election.

Soon after Yashodhara entered the meeting hall, she looked around at the photographs of BJP’s top leaders Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Deen Dayal Upadhyay and Atal Bihari Vajpayee adorning the walls. But her mother’s photograph was missing. She flew into a rage.

“I have been sensing for quite some time that those who devoted all their life to build the party are being marginalised,” she angrily remarked and left the venue, leaving other party leaders aghast.

Soon after, a photograph of Vijaya Raje, reverentially addressed as Rajmata or Amma Maharaj, was arranged and put up in the hall.

Senior BJP leaders made frantic calls to miffed Yashodhara to persuade her to return. But she did not oblige.

The meeting was organised in a Bhopal suburb to deliberate on preparations for scheduled election meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Bhopal on September 25, which will mark the conclusion of the chief minister’s Jan Ashirvad Yatra.

Senior BJP leaders refused to comment on Yashodhara’s dramatic boycott of the meeting. Party’s national vice president Prabhat Jha feigned ignorance, while state BJP president Rakesh Singh declined to comment on the development.

State’s Home Minister Bhupendra Singh said Rajmata’s photograph is put up in every important BJP meeting. "If it was not put up this time, it should not have been a cause for annoyance for Yadhodharaji," he said.

Rajmata insulted

Yashodhara has expressed her displeasure over the alleged insult of her mother by the BJP several times in the past too. During the by-elections to two Assembly seats in February this year, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in an election meeting had questioned the role of the Scindia royal family in the 1857 Sepoy mutiny in which queen of Jhansi Laxmi Bai was martyred fighting the British.

Yashodhara sharply reacted to the chief minister’s jibe, saying the memory of her mother, who sacrificed everything for raising Jan Sangh and later BJP, was being humiliated.