–Yatharth Sikka
A day after, Rahul Gandhi said that his former party member and current BJP Rajya Sabha MP Jyotiraditya Scindia could have become Chief Minister with the Congress but was reduced to a ”backbencher” in the BJP. Jyotiraditya Scindia, on Tuesday, March 9, 2021, has hit back, remarking how Rahul Gandhi wasn’t so concerned about this particular topic at the time and that it could have been a different situation had it been.
Jyotiraditya Scindia said, “It would have been a different situation had Rahul Gandhi been concerned the same way as he was now when I was in Congress.”
Earlier today, Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra said, “Rahul Gandhi understood very quickly that without Scindia, Congress in MP is zero.”
While speaking to the Congress Youth Wing about the importance of Congress organisation on Monday, Rahul Gandhi added, “Jyotiraditya Scindia had the option to strengthen the organisation by working with Congress workers. I told him – One day, you will become the Chief Minister. But he chose another route. Write it down; he will never become Chief Minister there. He will have to come back here for that.”
It is to be noted that last year in March only, Scindia had quit the grand old party and joined BJP and was expelled from Congress after informing Sonia Gandhi about his decision to leave. He had said the path he was taking had been “drawing itself out over the last year”.
Scindia’s close ones had said he was sidelined in the Madhya Pradesh unit of Congress and that the two-party veterans, Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh, left “no opportunity”to slight him, “both within the party and in public”.
22 Congress MLAs, along with Jyotiraditya Scindia, had also quit the party and resigned from their Assembly membership last year, resulting in the Kamal Nath government’s downfall. The BJP then returned to power in the state under the leadership of Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
