Digvijaya Singh is an Indian politician and a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha. He is Ex-General Secretary of the Indian National Congress party's All India Congress Committee. Previously, he had served as the 14th Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, a central Indian state, for two terms from 1993 to 2003. Prior to that he was a minister in Chief Minister Arjun Singh's cabinet between 1980 and 1984. In 2019 Lok Sabha elections he was defeated by Pragya Singh Thakur for Bhopal Lok Sabha seat.

Personal life

Singh was born in Indore in the erstwhile princely state of Holkar (now a part of Madhya Pradesh) of British India, on 28 February 1947. His father, Balbhadra Singh, was the Raja of Raghogarh (under Gwalior State), presently known as Guna district of Madhya Pradesh, and a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) as independent candidate for the Raghogarh Vidhan Sabha constituency following the 1951 elections. He was educated at The Daly College, Indore and the Shri Govindram Seksaria Institute of Technology and Science (SGSITS) Indore, where he completed his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering.

Since 1969, he was married to Asha Singh, who died in 2013, and with whom he has four daughters and a son Jaivardhan Singh, who was member of Madhya Pradesh's 14th Vidhan Sabha serving as the Cabinet Minister of Urban Development and Housing. In April 2014, he confirmed that he was in a relationship with a Rajya Sabha TV anchor Amrita Rai; they married in late August 2015.

Narmada Yatra

The sacred Narmada River, the lifeline of Central India, is worshipped as Narmada maiyya (mother) or Ma Rewa (derived from “rev” meaning leaping one). One of the five holy rivers of India, it is the only one which has the tradition of being circumambulated from source to sea and back, on a pilgrimage or yatra.

Being the longest west-flowing river, the Narmada parikrama is a formidable spiritual exercise and challenge—an incredible journey of about 3,300 km.

Digvijaya Singh along with his wife started the Narmada Parikrama on 30 September 2017, from Barman Ghat, on banks of river Narmada after taking the blessing of his spiritual guru Shankaracharya Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati. The journey took them from Barman Ghat, on River Narmada southern banks, all the way to its mouth at Bharuch in Gujarat. At Bharuch, Mithi Talai is the point where the Narmada joins the Arabian Sea. Here they took a motorboat from the southern to the northern end and begin the return journey along its northern bank. On 9 April 2018 they completed the narmada parikrama at Barman Ghat having covered 3,300 kilometres (2,100 mi) by foot in 192 days.

Political career

MLA and MP, 1977–1993

• Singh was president of the Raghogarh Nagar palika (a municipal committee) between 1969 and 1971. An offer in 1970 from Vijayaraje Scindia for him to join the Jana Sangh was not taken up and he subsequently joined the Congress party. He became a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) as the party's representative for the Raghogarh Vidhan Sabha constituency of the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly in the 1977 elections.
• He was president of the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee between 1985 and 1988, having been nominated by Rajiv Gandhi, and was re-elected in 1992. He had been elected as a member of the 8th Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India, in the Indian general election of 1984, representing the Rajgarh Lok Sabha constituency. 

Chief Minister, 1993–2003

• In 1993, he resigned from the Lok Sabha because he had been appointed Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh.
• Through his policies, which have evoked both strong support and criticism among academics, Singh targeted the prospects of those people during his first term in office. These efforts attempted to arrest the declining support for the INC by those communities, who since the 1960s had increasingly been favouring the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Jana Sangh and its political successor, the BJP. 
• Among the measures introduced to achieve his aim were the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS), redistribution of common grazing land (charnoi) to landless dalits and tribals, free electricity for farmers, the promotion of Panchayati Raj as a means of delegating power to villagers and a supplier diversity scheme which guaranteed that thirty per cent of government supplies would be purchased from the disadvantaged groups.
• In his second term as Chief Minister, Singh sought to extend his decentralising, socially beneficial ideas by instituting reforms in healthcare that would guarantee a minimum level of care at panchayat level by financing the training of locally nominated healthcare professionals. 
• Singh won the Raghogarh constituency again in 2003 but his party overall was heavily defeated by the BJP, as it also was in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

Work at national level

• Following his party's defeat, Singh determined that he would not contest any polls for the next decade and the Raghogarh constituency was won by his cousin, Mool Singh, at the next elections in 2008.
• Singh shifted his attention to working for Congress from the centre, becoming a general secretary of the AICC and being involved in the party's organisation across several states, including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
• In January 2014, he was elected as a member of parliament to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh.
• Singh has been criticised by his opposition for corruption, which he denied. In 2011, a charge sheet was submitted in court against him but the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) determined in March 2014 that there was no case to answer.
• In June 2015, Singh petitioned the Supreme Court, pleading for a CBI probe into the Vyapam scam. He claimed to have interacted with a whistleblower who had revealed sensitive information to him. The CBI dismissed the claim in November 2017, raising the possibility that Singh could be prosecuted for fabricating evidence.
• In the 2019 Indian general election, he ran for Lok Sabha in the constituency of Bhopal, but lost to Pragya Singh Thakur.

Controversies

1998 Multai farmer massacre

In 1998, 19 to 24 farmers were shot dead by Madhya Pradesh police. Singh was Chief Minister of the state at the time and the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) blamed him for arresting farmers' leaders.

Batla House controversy

A comment by Singh in 2011 led to disagreements within his party. He stated that the Batla House encounter case, which led to the death of two terrorists and one police officer, was fake. The Union Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, dismissed Singh's claim and his demand for a further judicial investigation into it. Congress rejected his views that the encounter was stage-managed, stating that the encounter should not be politicised or raked up for political gains. Singh's stand on the Batla House encounter led to criticism from the opposition BJP.

Remarks about female MP

In 2013, Singh described Meenakshi Natarajan, a female Congress MP from Mandsaur, as "sau tunch maal" ("totally unblemished")—a colloquialism The Times of India described as "frequently used loosely to describe a woman as 'sexy'". Advocates for women's rights were upset by Singh's comment and called for Congress to act against him. However, the MP backed Singh and said he meant that she was like "pure gold"; The Times of India commented that "tunch maal" is "also a trade jargon among jewelers to describe the level of purity of the yellow metal" and added that Singh prefaced his comment about Natarajan by describing himself as a "political goldsmith".

Criticism of burial of bin Laden's body

Singh criticised the United States in 2011 for not respecting Osama bin Laden's religion when it buried him at sea, saying "however big a criminal one might be, his religious traditions should be respected while burying him." Congress's leadership distanced itself from his views. Singh later said that his statement should not be interpreted as support for or opposition to bin Laden, adding "I had merely said that the worst of criminals should be cremated according to their faith. He is a terrorist and he deserved the treatment that he got."

Clash with BJYM workers and imprisonment

In March 2022, Digvijay Singh along with six others was sentenced for one year rigorous imprisonment by an Indore court in connection with clash with BJYM workers in 2011.

Views on Hindu nationalist groups

Singh has said that the right-wing extremism of the kind he said is perpetrated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) represented a grave threat to national unity. He equated RSS to the Nazis stating 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 falsely accused the RSS of being involved in a number of terrorist strikes including the Mumbai terror attacks. He demanded a CBI enquiry into the 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".

Positions held

1. 1969: President of the Raghogarh Municipal Council
2. 1977: 1980: Became a Member of Parliament from Raghogarh in Guna District
3. 1980: Cabinet Minister managing Agriculture, Animal Husbandry Fisheries Irrigation and Command Area Development
4. 1984: 1991: Member of Parliament from Rajgarh
5. 1985: President of Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee
6. 1992: President of MP Congress Committee
7. 1993, 1998: Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh
8. 2013: General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee
9. 2013: Member of the committee chaired by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for 2014 General Elections