'Scindia is the only one who can walk into my house anytime,' says Rahul

A day after his former aide Jyotiraditya Scindia left the Congress to join the BJP, senior leader Rahul Gandhi broke his silence on Wednesday and dismissed reports that he had refused to meet the Madhya Pradesh leader.

“Scindia is the only one who can walk into my house anytime... He was with me in college,” Rahul Gandhi said.

Later he retweeted an old photo of him with Scindia and Chief Minister Kamal Nath. Rahul had originally tweeted the image on December 13, 2018, along with a quote of Leo Tolstoy “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time”.

Scindia, who had not been on good terms with the Congress leadership for quite sometime, quit the party on Tuesday following his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. On Wednesday, he joined the BJP in the presence of party president J.P. Nadda.

Soon after Scindia shot his resignation letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday, his cousin and erstwhile Tripura royal, Pradyot Manikya Debbarman, claimed that the miffed leader had tried to meet Rahul Gandhi for months before he quit the party.

“I know for a fact that Jyotiraditya Scindia was trying to meet Rahul Gandhi for months; no appointment was given. If he (Rahul Gandhi) did not want to hear us, why did he even bring us to the party?," Debbarman wrote on Facebook.

According to sources, the BJP is likely to name him as one of its candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls in Madhya Pradesh and is also confident of forming the government in the state with his help as 22 MLAs including Scindia's supporters have resigned from the state assembly reducing the Kamal Nath government to a minority.

Peeved with his marginalisation in the Congress, Scindia met Shah on Tuesday and then the two leaders went to the prime minister's residence where they held talks for over an hour.

Soon after meeting Modi, he tendered his resignation to Congress president Sonia Gandhi saying it was time for him to move on.

Scindia took the decision to sever his ties with the Congress on the day of his father Madhavrao Scindia's 75th birth anniversary.

A four-time MP, Scindia first got elected from Guna in Madhya Pradesh in 2002 after winning a bye-election necessitated by his father's demise. He was only 31 years old at that time.

He gradually made his way up the Congress ladder becoming Minister of State for Communications and IT in 2007 during the Congress-led UPA-1. In 2009, he became Minister of State for Commerce and Industry and in 2012 was appointed Minister of State for Power during UPA-2.

After the Congress lost the 2014 General Election, Sonia Gandhi named him the party's chief whip in the Lok Sabha.