Air India Maharaja Has Maharaja Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, A Barb And A Reaction

New Delhi: Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has hit back at a top Congress leader for calling him “maharaja”, alluding to Mr Scindia’s royal lineage.

Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, asking a question in the Lok Sabha about airport projects in West Bengal, used the Hindi word to mean a king in what appeared to be a swipe at Mr Scindia’s background.

“The matter is that one maharaja is a minister, another maharaja is Air India, and now privatisation is happening,” Mr Chowdhury said, referring to the Union Minister who was with the Congress before he quit and joined the BJP in March 2020.

Mr Scindia was made Civil Aviation Minister in a reboot of the Union cabinet in July last year, when 36 new ministers joined the government and seven got promoted. He took charge of the ministry that was once headed by his father Madhavrao Scindia, who died in a plane crash in Uttar Pradesh’s Mainpuri district in September 2001.

Taking strong exception to the comment by Mr Chowdhury, the Union Minister first thanked the Congress leader for asking the question on the airport projects, and added, “I want to inform him that my name is Jyotiraditya Scindia. Perhaps, he has some misunderstanding, and keep talking about my past again and again. But I want to inform him.”

The sale of Air India to Tata Sons was an “extremely difficult and challenging transaction”, Mr Scindia told NDTV last month, when the airline was officially handed over to the salt to software conglomerate.

Born in 1971 and educated in Harvard and Stanford institutions, Mr Scindia has traversed a long way after contesting his first election as a Congress candidate in 2002, a by-election in Guna Lok Sabha constituency, which was held after his father died in the plane crash.