Digvijaya taunts Scindia, says he was 'Maharaja' in Congress, but just 'bhai sahab' in BJP

Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh on Thursday said Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia was treated like a “maharaja” (king) when he was in the Congress, but after joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) he has been reduced to a level of being just a “bhai sahab” (brother).

Scindia, scion of the Gwalior royal family, quit the Congress, where he was seen as a rival of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Singh, and joined the BJP in March 2020 and was inducted into the Union Cabinet in 2021.

Talking to reporters here in Dhar district, Singh said he had not expected Scindia, who was associated with the Congress for long, to quit the party, but added the Union minister should think about his current "status" in the saffron outfit.

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“Certainly, we regret. We had not expected him (Scindia) to leave us,” the Rajya Sabha MP remarked when asked whether he regretted the fall of the Congress government in the state after his then-party colleague switched sides.

Singh (76), a two-time chief minister, said the Congress gave a lot to Scindia. "I and Arjun Singh (former CM) brought his father (Madhavrao Scindia) into the Congress. Gave him (Jyotiraditya Scindia) all due respect. Promoted him in the party, made him a Union minister, a general secretary of the AICC (All India Congress Committee) and we respected him like a maharaja.

Now, the BJP has made him just a bhai sahab...therefore, he should think about it," he said. The Kamal Nath-led Congress government, which assumed office in December 2018, collapsed in March 2020, after a group of MLAs loyal to Scindia deserted the party and later joined the BJP.

The saffron outfit later formed its government. Singh arrived in Badnawar town to meet Congress workers as part of the job assigned to him to tour Assembly seats where the Opposition party is weak. Assembly polls are due in Madhya Pradesh in end-2023. The Congress had won the Badnawar Assembly seat in 2018, but local MLA Rajyavardhan Singh Dattigaon, now a minister, switched to the BJP along with Scindia in 2020 and the saffron party (which fielded Dattigaon) defeated the Congress in a subsequent bypoll. Referring to the 2019 Pulwama terror attack and questions raised by former Jammu and Kashmir governor Satyapal Malik, the Congress MP said when he himself talked about the issue in the past, the BJP had termed him a “Pakistani and an anti-national.”

"Pulwama attack took place. Forty of our CRPF jawans were martyred. Why were they killed? The CRPF director requested that it (Pulwama) is a sensitive zone that CRPF jawans should be sent to Delhi from Srinagar through a plane, but Modi ji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) refused it. Why did he refuse," he had said in January this year. Singh pointed out that Malik has now said the same thing. “Now, when the same thing was stated by the (former) governor, he was asked to remain shut. Similarly, when we talked about the Adani issue (over a report released by a US-based research firm) we were asked to remain shut. Only dictator talks about remaining shut.

This is not the language used in a democracy,” he remarked in an indirect attack at the BJP. Asked about framing of charges against him by a special court in Bhopal in a defamation case filed by Madhya Pradesh BJP president V D Sharma over remarks made in connection with the Vyapam recruitment scam, Singh said levelling allegations was his right. “Digvijaya Singh makes a statement only after a lot of thinking and reasoning," said the former CM. Asked about the murder of a woman in Dhar on Wednesday, Singh blamed the district administration for the crime.