Book Excerpt: The Scindia Legacy - From Ranoji to Jyotiraditya

That Vijaya Raje had lost to Indira Gandhi very badly, forfeiting her deposit, has been mentioned in an earlier chapter and does not need any repetition. But one thing became certain after that—the Rajmata further got firmly entrenched in the Jana Sangh and then the newly founded BJP whereas Madhavrao became very close to Sanjay and Indira from 1980 onwards.

Politics had sadly overturned blood loyalties in the Scindia family. Physical division of properties and staff of Usha Kiran, Jai Vilas, Rani Mahal in Gwalior and the Padma Vilas Palace and the huge racecourse property in Pune, among other landed properties and precious jewels and business companies, etc., was painful to the members on both sides. Young Jyotiraditya and his elder sister Chitrangada remember Madhavrao driving them from Mumbai to Pune where during the evenings the horses would be set free, and they would parade around the palace to entertain the owners. The public dispute over property and resultant animosities over political differences, however, resulted in legal cases over the next few decades. Properties in London, Delhi and some other places were disposed of due to pressing compulsions between 1980 and 2001, the year the Rajmata passed away. Many complicated litigations continued for many years during her lifetime and after that as well.

Indian Express had reported a little after Vijaya Raje’s death in a Delhi hospital that the battle for inheritance was not for a few buildings or gems here and there but for a treasure worth a whooping Rs 30,000 crores. The national daily had front-paged a banner story by Ritu Sarin, the then head of the investigative journalism team, covering contents of the will of the Rajmata and also quoting Sardar Angre, then 81 and one of the executors of the will. She wrote: ‘Among other details of the jewels and jewelleries, that Angre had personally helped Vijaya Raje prepare list of moveable and unmovable assets which ran into 500 pages.