Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, who is currently on a six-month-long Narmada Parikrama Yatra encompassing an area of of 3,300 sq km, is expected to emerge stronger politically and spiritually when his tour ends in March 2018, political observers told The Sunday Guardian.
Seventy-year-old Singh, who started the yatra on Dusherra eve, is accompanied by his wife and TV journalist Amrita Singh. He is expected to have passed through and spent time in 110 out of the 230 Assembly seats in the state by the end of his tour, with the Assembly elections barely 200 days ahead from that time. His son and Congress MLA, Jaivardhan, too, has been accompanying his father, who walks close to 20 km per day. Earlier, an English newspaper had carried a “gossip” that Jaivardhan would be skipping the yatra as he was “upset” with his father.
The timing of the yatra, which was announced just days after Singh was removed as the party in-charge of Goa and Karnataka, has not come as a surprise to those who regard him as the most talented leader of the party during the late 1990s and early 2000.
“He has a brilliant political mind; he is a master strategist, who learnt politics under the tutelage of Congress stalwart Arjun Singh. Whatever he says and does is not a random act; a lot of thinking goes behind it. A churning is going to happen at the top level of the Congress soon and no leader, who thinks of the future, would want to keep himself ‘non-relevant’ during this time. Digvijaya Singh is making all the right kinds of noises to make people aware that he is around,” a senior journalist, who has seen the working of Singh and the party very closely, said.
Singh had taken a self-imposed political vanvas (exile) for 10 years in 2003 after the party lost the MP elections. He was blamed for the election loss, with his critics saying that he took no interest in building roads and generating power in the state. He sprung back into active politics by getting nominated into the Rajya Sabha in 2014, which came as a surprise to his detractors, who had written him off. “He has the ears of Rahul Gandhi, despite stories coming out that he has fallen off the good books of the Gandhis. Both Rahul and Soniaji are aware of how crucial he is to the party,” a senior Bhopal-based party functionary said.
In the run-up to the 2018 MP elections, news coming from the state is mostly revolving around either Jyotiraditya Scindia or Kamal Nath and on the issue of who is more capable of leading the party in the state. If another defeat happens, it will break the party in the state, as Scindia had told this correspondent in an interview in June.
“Everyone knows that Singh is very spiritual, but the timing of the yatra is interesting. Singh knows that he has to remain strong in his home state if he has to be relevant in Delhi. The kind of support that he is getting during his yatra confirms that he is someone who cannot be written off yet. When he ends the yatra in March, he will have become stronger,” another Bhopal-based party functionary, who has been with the state Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) since 2000, said. Party functionaries close to Singh said that he had no desire to be the CM of the state again, even if the opportunity arises. “He has worked in that (CM) position. He is happy with Scindia being projected as the face. That much is clear,” a party leader said.
Even state BJP leaders, who initially were taking potshots at Singh, have now retreated on this issue as attacking Singh on this yatra will give a message that a pilgrim who is on a religious duty is not being spared because of political reasons. The state government is keeping a close watch on the response that Singh is generating during his yatra and has asked the intelligence department to send periodic reports.
“Till Singh is active in politics, neither Congress nor its leaders can ignore him in Madhya Pradesh. Both Scindia and Kamal Nath have a strong influence in the state, but the party cannot ignore the influence ‘Diggy Raja’ holds in the state. If they have to stage a comeback in the state by toppling Shivraj Singh Chouhan, they need the strategy of Singh, networking of Kamal Nath and the appeal of Scindia, all working,” the journalist said.