Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has lunch with tribal families of Madhya Pradesh

Guna, one of the popular Lok Sabha seats, will go to polls on May 7.

Guna:

Union minister and BJP candidate from Guna Lok Sabha constituency Jyotiraditya Scindia on Saturday called tribals the guardians of “jal, jungle and jameen” and had lunch with a family from the Madhya Pradesh community.

Addressing forest dwellers in Gunabamori assembly area, he said the BJP-ruled Center will spend Rs 25,000 crore to develop 12,665 tribal villages in the country. The region has an estimated 30% tribal population.

“If there is anyone in this country and in the world who is truly protective of Mother Earth, it is the tribal society. For thousands of years it has been protecting the ‘jal, jungle and jameen’ (water, forest and land). The indigenous people are the guardians of jal. Er, Jungle and Jamien,” he said.

“If the world followed the way of life of indigenous peoples and protected natural resources, climate change would not happen,” he said.

Later, Scindia had lunch at a tribal woman’s house, where he tasted ‘dal-baati’.

#watch | Madhya Pradesh: Earlier today, Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had lunch with locals during the upcoming Lok Sabha election campaign in Kuna. pic.twitter.com/wPR1gJJa6B

— ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2024

Guna, one of the popular Lok Sabha seats, will go to polls on May 7.

Scindia (53) lost to the BJP’s KP Yadav by a margin of over 1.21 lakh votes in 2019 when he was the Congress candidate. Prior to that, he had represented the district since 2002.

Guna has been represented six times by his grandmother, BJP stalwart Vijaya Raje Scindia, and four times by his father, Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia Representative Madhavrao Scindia.

It is speculated that the Congress may field former Union minister Arun Yadav against Scindia as the Yadav electorate in the constituency is estimated at 200,000 people.

Congress leaders said they would go all out to defeat Scindia, who defected to the BJP along with his loyal MLAs in March 2020, leading to the collapse of the Kamal Nath government in the state.

KK Mishra, head of the MP’s media cell, said: “We will ensure that Scindia loses the election at any cost. He will be subject to fierce political attack by us. He is our number one political enemy, just like the BJP ideology, bent on dividing society,” he had told PTI earlier.

In the 2019 general election, the BJP won 28 of the 29 parliamentary seats in the Lok Sabha.

Polling in Madhya Pradesh is scheduled to be held in four phases between April 19 and May 13.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)