NEW DELHI: Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh, for decades one of the BJP’s favourite targets, is suddenly being praised by ruling party leaders. The compliments, however, have come at a cost. Singh now finds himself under fire from leaders within his own party.
The latest twist came when BJP MLA Pritam Lodhi openly offered Singh a place in the BJP. Calling the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister a “good elderly man” who helps everyone, the BJP MLA claimed that Congress leaders were not allowing Singh to thrive despite his decades of service.
If Singh crossed over to the BJP, Lodhi suggested, he would be treated “like royalty”.
Congress leader Ravi Saxena hit back, saying Digvijaya Singh’s “DNA is rooted in the Congress”. Describing him as a loyal soldier of the party, Saxena said Singh was the kind of leader who kept the BJP “trembling.” He advised the BJP to stop dreaming that the Congress veteran would ever join its ranks.
Yet the fact that the BJP is publicly praising Singh while sections of the Congress are attacking him tells its own story.
At the centre of the storm is the Veer Bharat Nyas land controversy in Ujjain. On June 24, Madhya Pradesh Congress president Jitu Patwari, along with party media department chairman Pawan Khera, addressed a press conference in Delhi after a national daily’s investigation on land purchases linked to Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav and his family’s real estate firms in Ujjain.
Patwari went a step further and alleged that government land worth around Rs 500 crore in Ujjain had been handed over to a trust named Veer Bharat Nyas for a token amount of just Rs 1. He said Shriram Tiwari, cultural advisor to the chief minister, was associated with the trust and asked on what basis such expensive land was allotted.
But just a couple of days later, Digvijaya Singh addressed journalists in Ujjain and took a position that appeared to puncture his own party chief’s charge. “It is being alleged that land worth Rs 500 crore has been rendered to a private trust for Rs 1 only. But I have all relevant papers with me, which establish that the concerned land hasn’t been given to any private trust. The concerned trust is a government trust,” Singh said.
He added that he did not speak on any issue without proper research. According to him, the papers showed that the trust was a government trust whose ex-officio chairman was the state chief minister. He also remarked, “There isn’t a dearth of dalals who make false accusations and then earn money.”
