Gwalior: The Gwalior unit of Madhya Pradesh Congress has recommended the name of party general secretary Jyotiraditya Scindia's wife Priyadarshini as the Lok Sabha candidate from the constituency. The Congress workers passed a resolution in this regard on Sunday.
A meeting of the Congress district unit, called on Sunday at party office to discuss the potential candidates, unanimously passed a resolution supporting Priyadarshini's candidature from the seat. Gwalior Congress chief Dr Devendra Sharma and rural unit chairman Mohan Singh Rathore have jointly sent the recommendation letter to party president Rahul Gandhi.
"People of Gwalior want Jyotiraditya to contest, but if that could not be possible then Pridarshini must be the Congress candidate from the constituency," state minister Imarati Devi said.
Earlier, ministers in the Kamal Nath government had proposed Priyadarshini's name as party candidate for the seat.
Political Lineage
The Gwalior region has been a Scindia family bastion which the Congress has been retaining since 1999.
Priyadarshini, who hails from the erstwhile Gaekwad royalty of Baroda, had been a voter in Delhi earlier.
But a year ahead of the assembly elections, she enrolled as a voter from Shivpuri, a family bastion and one of the eight assembly constituencies in the Guna Lok Sabha seat.
Onmanorama had earlier reported that MPCC general secretary Yogendra Lumba tabled a resolution recommending Priyadarshini's name from the Guna constituency and it received unanimous support.
"As Jyotiraditya Scindia has been placed in charge of Western Uttar Pradesh, we feel Maharaniji can immensely contribute to the party. So a resolution was adopted unanimously and has been sent to the central leadership," Lumba told mediapersons.
Priyadarshini, an alumna of Sophia College, Mumbai, was featured in a prominent fashion and lifestyle magazine's list of 50 most beautiful women in the country a few years ago.
During the previous elections, she has addressed many rallies and street-corner meetings.
The royals of the erstwhile Gwalior kingdom, one of the richest of the more than 500 princely states that became part of India after British rule ended in 1947, enjoys immense clout here.
(With inputs from IANS)