Digvijaya Singh

Digvijay Singh
9th Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh
In office 1993 to 2003
Preceded by	Sunderlal Patwa
Succeeded by	Uma Bharati
Constituency	Raghogarh
Personal details
Born	(1947-02-28) 28 February 1947 Madhya Pradesh
Political party	Indian National Congress

Digvijay Singh (Hindi: दिगविजय सिंह) (born 28 February 1947) is an Indian politician, a former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, generally known for speaking nonsense to get media coverage and a senior leader of the Indian National Congress political party. He has been the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh state for two five-year terms. He first became Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh on 7 December 1993 and continued to hold the post till Congress was voted out of power in the November 2003. He is currently a General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee.

Early life

Digvijay Singh was born in the Raghogarh royal principality, in Guna district of Madhya Pradesh. He is a Raghorarhi-Rajput by community. He is also the notable alumni of SGSITS Indore, which is the among the best engineering colleges of Madhya Pradesh, India. He completed B.E. in Civil Engineering in 1968.

Political career

Digvijay Singh first became president of the Raghogarh municipal committee at the age of 22 years. He then joined the congress party in 1971. He contested his first assembly elections in 1977 for the congress party and became an MLA for the first time. He became a Minister of State and later a Cabinet Minister in the Madhya Pradesh state government led by Arjun Singh in 1980–84 going on to serve as the President of Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee in 1985. He was elected as a Member of Parliament in 1984 and 1991 from Rajgarh constituency. In 1993 Digvijay Singh became the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and then got re-elected for his second term as chief minister in 1998. He represented his hometown and constituency, Raghogarh from 1977 to 1984 and then from 1993 to 2008 (where he served as the chief minister for 10 years from 1993 to 2003) in the State Assembly elections as well. During his ten year regime, Digvijay Singh pursued a reformist agenda with a focus on decentralisation of powers, and the empowerment of weaker sections. Social sector programmes like adult literacy, expansion of the primary school network, and reforms in the rural health sector got a boost during this period. A special effort was ostensibly made through the Bhopal Declaration 2003 to reach out to the Dalits. Defying anti-incumbency predictions, the Congress got another term in 1998 under his leadership.

Controversies

Corruption charges

In 2001, during an income tax raid on a liquor manufacturer in Bhopal, income tax authorities seized a diary maintained by the distillery's owners. They found the names of several officials and politicians of the state and their bribe money written against their names in the diary which reportedly also listed Digvijay Singh's name with a payment of 100 million rupees against it. Digvijay Singh was the chief minister at the time. Digvijay Singh said that this was a conspiracy by BJP and NDA to destabilize his government.

In 2001, he appointed A.N.Singh as the Director-General of the State Police (DGP). A.N.Singh's name appeared prominently in the tell-tale diaries seized in a raid by the income tax authorities some months ago. When those diaries first made headlines, Singh was the state's additional DGP (Intelligence).

A Jhabua court issued a warrant against Digvijay Singh and 14 others for alleged remarks on the 1998 Jhabua nuns rape case accusing Hindu organizations of being involved in the incident, following a civil defamation suit filed by a local lawyer. A Bhopal court later cancelled the warrant after he appeared in person and furnished a surety bond for Rs. 5,000.

In 2004, the Madhya Pradesh Lok Ayukta registered an FIR in connection with a land scam in Indore under the Prevention of Corruption Act to probe allegations of criminal conspiracy and corruption against Digvijay Singh, and four others. In 2009, an FIR was registered against Digvijay Singh by the Uttar Pradesh Police for allegedly making objectionable remarks against the then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati during an election rally. On 12 February 2009, a case of cheating and corruption was filed against Digvijay Singh, a former state minister Choudhary Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi and ten others by the Madhya Pradesh state Economic Offences Wing under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act for alleged irregularities in construction of the Treasure Island Mall in Indore. On 20 April 2011, the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court directed the Economic Offences Wing of Madhya Pradesh state to file a chargesheet against Digvijay Singh and 11 others for these alleged irregularities. The FIR was lodged against him at Mallwan police station in Madhya Pradesh for violating model code of conduct by making objectionable remarks during an election speech on April 2009.

In 2011 activist Agnivesh called for the Indian National Congress to rein Digvijay in, stating that he was a burden to the party's image vis-a-vis corruption.

Criticism of Hindu groups

Digvijay Singh has consistently taken a public stance against Right-Wing Hindu Groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal accusing them of being involved in terrorist activities.

In December 2010, Digvijay Singh gave several interviews in the Media claiming that Mumbai ATS Chief Mr. Hemant Karkare called him hours before he was killed, talking to him about threats to his (Karkare's) life from Hindu extremist groups. Hemant Karkare in his role as chief of the Mumbai ATS had found incriminating evidence implicating several individuals with known RSS links and was facing a barrage of attacks including from right-wing politicians. During the same time U.S. Wikileaks cables quoted cables sent by the U.S. Ambassador about Congress party "playing religious politics" and "crass political opportunism” in plating doubts regarding Mr. Karkare's murder by Pakistani terrorists. A petition was filed in a local court against him, alleging that his remarks in connection with slain Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare, was an attempt to whip up communal frenzy. However the Maharashtra government was unable to find any evidence that such a call occurred

Coming on the eve of the WikiLeaks cables, this caused a lot of heat in the media. Digvijay repeated the allegations in his address to the Congress plenary session saying that the right-wing extremism of the kind perpetrated by the RSS and SIMI represented a grave threat to national unity. Equating the RSS to the Nazis he said that The RSS, in the garb of its nationalist ideology, is targeting Muslims the same way Nazis targeted Jews in the 1930s. Israel had taken grave exception to this comment. He accused the RSS of being involved in a number of terrorist strikes across the country. Further in the same speech, he demanded a CBI enquiry into the mysterious murder of Sunil Joshi, an RSS activist accused of being involved in the Ajmer Dargah attack, alleging that Joshi was murdered because "he knew too much".

In a interview, Singh said that he was a better Hindu and followed Hinduism better than RSS.

Communalism

Observers have accused Digvijay Singh of adopting Islamist methods of propaganda for political purposes, in the form of "Goebbelsian propaganda"

In the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Digvijay Singh stated that "even the worst of criminals should be buried or cremated according to their faith", calling him "Osama Ji" (Word to show respect in Hindi). This statement was criticized by senior members of the B J P as communal and with an eye for pandering to the Muslim community

Digvijay Singh suggested that the Batla House encounter case, which led to the death of two suspected terrorists and one police officer, was fake.