Digvijaya in Kamal Nath corner now, son Jaivardhan takes battle to their common rival, Jyotiraditya Scindia

Jaivardhan was in the news recently over the role he played in getting two Scindia loyalists back into the Congress fold. This included Baijnath Singh Yadav, who walked into the Congress leading a 700-car rally in Bhopal on June 14, and Yadvendra Singh Yadav, who joined the Congress in March.

Jaivardhan also baited Scindia on June 21, questioning his future relevance in the BJP, and raised doubts about whether those loyal to him who had defected with him three years ago to the BJP would be fielded by the ruling party in the forthcoming Assembly polls.

Jaivardhan insists politics was never the path his father, a past master at the game, wanted him to follow. Educated at Doon School and the Shri Ram College of Commerce under Delhi University, Jaivardhan did a four-year stint as a senior analyst at a management consultancy. He says when he confided his political ambitions to Digvijaya, he was discouraged by the Congress stalwart.

It’s a long way since then, in a state that Digvijaya has moved on from, for the larger national stage — ostensibly creating space for his son. In 2013, Jaivardhan, then just 26, got a Congress ticket and became the MLA from Raghogarh, winning by 59,000 votes, which remains a state record. In 2018, Jaivardhan was re-elected by 45,000 votes, and became the youngest member in Kamal Nath’s Cabinet.

As Minister for Urban Development and Housing, he was part of the MoU signing for the Bhopal and Indore Metro rail projects, worked on drinking water projects in small towns, and launched a project to provide e-scooters to unemployed women in urban areas.

As another election comes around, the infamously squabbling Congress stalwarts seem to have patched up, with Digvijaya backing Kamal Nath as the CM face. And now, the task appears to have fallen on Jaivardhan to extract revenge from Scindia — seen as Kamal Nath and Digvijaya’s common rival at one time — for his rebellion of 2020 that brought down the Kamal Nath government.

During the 2020 by-elections in the state, Jaivardhan had lived up to the party’s expectations by delivering Agar and Biaro Assembly seats for the Congress. “Because of that performance, I was given charge of the Gwalior-Chambal and Malwa belts. I think people are fed up with the rule of fear; and horse-trading does have its consequences,” he says.

On allegations of “luring” Scindia loyalists back, he says: “Absolutely not. They are feuding among themselves. Earlier, Scindia used to wield a lot of power within the Congress in the Gwalior-Chambal area. The BJP has tall leaders from the area, like Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar, state Home Minister Narottam Mishra and BJP state president V D Sharma, so he doesn’t enjoy the same unchallenged power as before. Look at how K P Yadav, who defeated Scindia, attacks him in public. Conflict was inevitable. His own loyalists, who had defeated BJP leaders, are now in the same party.”

Jaivardhan attributes his determination to join politics to senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s example. “Politics was something my father never wanted for me. He was adamant that I don’t join politics. But I saw Rahul Gandhi, who wanted to get into public service despite having everything, and wanted to do the same,” Jaivardhan says.

The 36-year-old also claims that Digvijaya’s advice to him, once he realised he was serious about politics, was to go on a yatra — quite like Rahul’s. Digvijaya told him to “tour villages, know the people on your own, and don’t depend on me”, Jaivardhan. So, after a Masters degree in Public Administration and Development Practice from Columbia University, Jaivardhan returned to India around 2013 and set off on a padayatra, visiting over 150 villages.

Jaivardhan says as MLA, his focus was education, healthcare and livelihoods, and that he roped in Columbia University professors to help develop primary healthcare infrastructure in his constituency. He also says he invited Nobel Laureate in Economics Professor Joseph Stiglitz to hold discussions on how to develop the area.

The BJP dismisses Jaivardhan as “the son of a raja”, a “dynast” at a time when the country has rejected dynastic politics.

Jaivardhan counters: “My father has not toured my constituency since 2018. He hasn’t made a single speech there. In his last speech, he asked the people not to vote for me if I did not do good work. In a democracy, the public is the Raja, and we are their loyal servants. I was elected and not nominated. That is credibility.”

But then there is a speech from last month that his rivals cite. Jaivardhan and wife Sreejamya Shahi, the member of the erstwhile royal family of Dumaria in Bihar, have a son. In May, the six-year-old delivered his maiden public speech, in Raghogarh.