Jyotiraditya Scindia is the country’s new Civil Aviation minister, a position which his father Madhavrao Scindia once held. Scindia senior was a Congressman. Junior was imported by the BJP from the Congress last year. The fast pass to the Cabinet berth is his reward for a shift in political allegiance that brought down the Congress government in his state Madhya Pradesh.

Scindia is a first-time BJP minister, but he has been a minister in Congress governments before. None of those assignments though was of Cabinet rank and Wednesday’s elevation allows the 50-year-old royal (he holds the title of Maharaja of Gwalior) a smug riposte to the Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, who had predicted for Jyotiraditya Scindia the status of a “backbencher” in the BJP.

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Jyotiraditya Scindia, for many years seen as a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, created headlines with his defection. But he had made clear his disaffection for months before that. Scindia felt neglected by the Congress when he was overlooked for the post of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister after the party won a rare election in 2018, narrowly snatching the state from the BJP.  The Congress opted for party veteran Kamal Nath and Scindia was diverted to a vague role in Uttar Pradesh in the run-up to the national election in 2019.

The Congress fared so poorly in Uttar Pradesh in the national election, that even Rahul Gandhi lost his seat, Amethi, to the BJP. In Madhya Pradesh too the Congress could win only one seat, Chhindwara, Kamal Nath’s stronghold, a Congress stronghold for years. Scindia too lost his family seat Guna to the BJP.

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An upset Jyotiraditya Scindia found some solace in buzz that he was being considered to replace Kamal Nath as the head of the Madhya Pradesh Congress since the Chief Minister held two key roles, but that did not happen. The last straw was reportedly the Congress denying Scindia a Rajya Sabha seat.

He walked over to the BJP,  taking with him his supporters and setting in motion a string of events that would lead to the fall of the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh and bring the BJP back to power.

The BJP had no hesitation in giving Jyotiraditya Scindia a Rajya Sabha seat, and today, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first cabinet expansion in this term, a ministerial berth.

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Before his career as a prominent Congressman, Jyotiraditya Scindia’s father Madhavrao was a member of the BJP’s predecessor, the Jan Sangh. He joined the Congress in 1980. Jyotiraditya follows in the footsteps of his grandmother Vijaya Raje Scindia, who was a member of the Congress, but later joined the BJP. His aunts Vasundhara Raje and Yashodhara Raje are BJP leaders.

Jyotiraditya Scindia joined the Congress after his father died in a plane crash in 2002. He contested and won the by-election to his father’s parliament seat Guna. He won the seat in three elections after that including in 2014, one of only a handful of Congress MPs to return to Parliament as a Modi wave crushed the party.