MYSURU, Jun 4: The scion of erstwhile royal family of Mysuru Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar on Tuesday tasted success in his maiden electoral foray.
The 32-year-old US-educated Wadiyar, who joined the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, won the Mysore Lok Sabha seat defeating M Lakshman of the Congress by a margin of 1,39,262 votes.
His win here is seen as a huge setback to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, as Mysuru is his home district, and he had invested a lot of time and energy camping, strategising and campaigning here.
Fielding Wadiyar, a political greenhorn, as candidate replacing sitting MP from the party Prathap Simha, was seen as a master stroke by the BJP, as the Wadiyar family still holds a lot of good will among the people of Mysuru, because of the contribution of royals to the region.
Wadiyar, the 27th “King’ of Wadiyar dynasty, was on May 28, 2015 crowned as the titular head of the erstwhile Mysuru royal family.
Pramoda Devi Wadiyar, widow of Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar, the last descendant of the Wadiyar dynasty, adopted Yaduveer Gopal Raj Urs, as they did not have any children, after which he was rechristened as Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar.
Wadiyar, who enjoys playing guitar and Saraswati Veena, has completed his BA in Economics and English at University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the US. He is the grandson of Princess Gayatri Devi ( Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar’s sister), the eldest daughter of the last Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar.
Interested in history, he plays tennis and is interested in horse racing.
He is married to Trishika Kumari Wadiyar, who hails from the Dungarpur Royal Family in Rajasthan. Trishika’s father Harshavardhan Singh was a BJP Rajya Sabha MP.
Politics is not something new to the Mysururoyal family. The previous scion, Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar, represented Mysuru Parliamentary constituency four times and had lost once.
Srikantadatta mostly remained with the Congress, but also had a short stint with the BJP.
Srikantadatta’s father Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar, the last Maharaja of Mysuru, held the position of Rajpramukh/Governor after independence. (PTI)
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