Bitterness between Nehru-Gandhi family sparked off by ‘Operation Lotus’ in 2020 touches new heights by end of 2023 MP poll campaign

Bhopal: The bitterness between the Nehru-Gandhi clan and Gwalior’s erstwhile royal family that sprung up three-and-a-half-years ago after Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia toppled the Congress Government in Madhya Pradesh in March 2020, has increased exponentially.

This was quite evident during the recent campaigns held in the run up to the November 17Assembly elections in the state.

Following ‘Operation Lotus’ in 2020, both the families attacked each other politically but maintained the dignity of the age-old relationship between their families that went back to a few generations.

However, by the end of the campaign for the 2023 election, things took a turn for the worse and it became a no-holds-barred campaign.

Even though the Congress called Jyotiraditya Scindia ‘traitor’ soon after he shifted to the BJP, and his two former party colleagues – MPCC head Kamal Nath and Rajya Sabha MP Digvijya Singh called him ‘bikau’ there was not much of an exchange after that.

However, Priyanka Gandhi’s attack on the erstwhile royal family on the last day of campaigning in the Gwalior-Chambal region which is a Scindia bastion, made the Union Minister so furious and he went on to attack all four generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

After Priyanka’s sarcastic remarks like, "Unhone apne pariwar ki parampara achhe se nibhai hai. (He is living up to the traditions of his family)" and "Scindia ji height me thoda kam rah gaye, lekin ghamand bahut bada hai unka (Scindia is a man of short height and high arrogance)," Scindia hit back at the Gandhi family with a long post on his social media account.

Scindia called Priyanka Gandhi a “part-time politician” and said he does not expect her to have the ability to understand the difference between “these two traditions.”

Through his post, Scindia said his ancestors had fought against the Afghans, the Mughals, the British and had sacrificed their lives to protect the country.

He then attacked the Nehru-Gandhi family saying, “Who protected India from China? Forget about doing so, Indian land was given to them as a gift. The second generation of which family imposed ‘Emergency’ in its greed for power? And even today, the present generation of which family is defaming the country by going to foreign forums? Before measuring capability with height, please take a look in the mirror yourself. The Scindia family has repeatedly changed the rule of corrupt and promise-breaking people, and the people of Madhya Pradesh are going to reject you again,” Scinida’s social media post read.

Scindia made this lengthy post on his social media account to counter Priyanka’s remarks on him and the erstwhile royal family during a poll rally in Datia on Wednesday.

During her address, the Congress leader had said, "Hum toh UP wale hain, jab gussa aata hai to byan kar deten hain, lekin hame Maharaj kahne ki aadat nahi hai. Yahi sabse badi samasya hai ki hum maharaj nahi bol sakte (We are from UP and we are used to telling it like it is when we get angry. But the biggest problem is that we can’t refer to him as maharaj)."

She further said that Scindia had cheated the Congress and the people of Gwalior-Chambal region by hatching a conspiracy to topple the Kamal Nath-led Congress Government in 2020.

"He (Scindia) has followed his family tradition well and he has betrayed the trust of the people of Gwalior and Chambal region. He toppled the Congress Government. He cheated the people of Gwalior-Chambal region," she had said in a scathing attack on Scindia.