Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia

Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia (born 1 January 1971 in Mumbai, Maharashtra) is an Indian politician. He is a Member of Parliament,representing the Guna constituency in the state of Madhya Pradesh and a member of the Indian National Congress party. He was the 'Minister of State with independent charge' (i.e. a junior Minister in the Central Government of India who has independent charge of his ministry) of Power in the cabinet of prime minister Manmohan Singh from October 2012 until May 2014.

Early life

Scindia was born in Mumbai to Madhavrao Scindia and Madhavi Raje Scindia. He studied at Campion School in the city and at The Doon School, Dehradun. He studied Economics at Harvard University and graduated in 1993. In 2001, he received a M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Scindia is a grandson of Jivajirao Scindia, the last Maharaja of the 21 Gun Salute Maratha Princely state of Gwalior, who then joined the Dominion of India in 1947, but, like other princes, was allowed to hold on to the titles and privileges of princely India, including an annual remuneration, called the privy purse. Upon his death in 1961, his son, Madhavrao Scindia (Jyotiraditya's father) became the titular Maharajah of Gwalior. However, he was to be the last, as, in the 26th amendment to the Constitution of India promulgated in 1971, the Government of India abolished all official symbols of princely India, including titles, privileges, and privy purses.

He is married to Priyadarshini Raje Scindia of the Gaekwad family of Baroda.

Political career

Scindia was elected to the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament) in February 2002 from Guna District - formerly represented by his father. He was re-elected in May 2004, and was introduced to the Union Council of Ministers in 2007 as Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology. He was then re-elected in 2009 for a third consecutive term and became Minister of State for Commerce and Industry. Later, he became Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power.

Scindia was appointed Minister of State for Power in November 2012 in a cabinet reshuffle which drafted a number of younger politicians into the Indian cabinet, including two other scions of princely families, R. P. N. Singh and Jitendra Singh.

Scindia was among the richest ministers in the UPA government with assets nearly Rs. 25 crore ($5 million). It included investments in Indian and foreign securities worth over Rs 16 crore ($3 million) and jewellery worth over Rs 5.7 crore ($1.1 million). He has also filed a legal claim to be the sole inheritor of the property belonging to his late father worth Rs 20,000 crores. However, this has been challenged in court by his aunts.

Scindia was tasked by the Indian Planning Commission with preventing a repetition of the July 2012 India blackout, the largest power outage in history, which affected over 620 million people, about 9% of the world population, In May 2013, Scindia claimed that checks and balances had been put in place to prevent any recurrence of grid collapse and that India would have the world's largest integrated grid by January 2014.

Scindia is President of the Board of Governors of Scindia School, Gwalior, which was founded by his great-grandfather, Madho Rao Scindia, in 1897 for schooling the sons of Indian princes and nobles. In 1947, the school opened its doors to the public.

He is also a hereditary patron of Daly College, Indore, which was established in 1882 to educate the children of the royalty, nobility and aristocracy of Central Indian princely states.

Cricket administrator

He is chairman of the regional Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association (MPCA) in India. After the spot fixing scandal in Indian Premier League exploded in the Indian media and subsequently Sanjay Jagdale, a member of the MPCA resigned from his job as secretary from the Board of Control for Cricket in India, Scindia spoke out against corruption in Indian cricket.