Caught in saffron tsunami, Digvijaya Singh faces tough battle in Rajgarh

The upcoming Lok Sabha polls have brought the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister into electoral politics yet again with the Congress fielding him this time from his home turf of Rajgarh, which includes the erstwhile Raghogarh principality of which Digvijaya is the titular Raja.

Digvijaya's huge electoral challenge

The contest for Digvijaya, who still has two years left of his Rajya Sabha term, comes five years after he was handed a humiliating defeat by BJP’s Pragya Thakur, who defeated him in the Bhopal constituency by a margin of over 3.64 lakh votes.

In Rajgarh, Digvijaya now faces the BJP’s incumbent two-term MP Rodmal Nagar. Nagar is neither a controversial and hugely polarising figure like Pragya Thakur nor a political heavyweight in the same league as Digvijaya though he had won the seat in 2019 by a staggering margin of over 4.31 lakh votes. Yet, Digvijaya’s taxing campaign schedule shows the enormity of the electoral challenge that the titular Raja of Raghogarh, an erstwhile principality-turned assembly segment that falls within the Rajgarh Lok Sabha constituency, is up against.

Every day at around 8 am, Digvijaya, an unabashed follower of Sanatan Dharma, offers prayers at one or the other temple in his constituency, which includes eight assembly seats of Raghogarh, Rajgarh, Susner, Biaora, Khilchipur, Chachoura, Narsinghgarh and Sarangpur. With a group of drum beaters leading the way and a steadily growing posse of supporters accompanying him, he then proceeds on his padyatra, frequently stopping for corner meetings and public interactions; covering anywhere between 14 to 20 kilometres a day.

Unlike most candidates who prefer to head back to their homes – or to a comfortable hotel or guest house – at the end of a day’s campaign, Digvijaya spends the night in whichever part of his constituency his foot march ends; preferring to stay over at the residence of a local party worker.

Brought Congress into the fight

“Voting in Rajgarh will happen on May 7 and by then Raja saheb (as Digvijaya is popularly called) wants to personally visit every household in the constituency. Right at the start of the campaign, he had told party workers that he wants to make a personal appeal to as many voters as possible to vote for him. Party workers are also being given a letter of appeal for votes on behalf of Raja saheb which they will deliver to every household alongwith leaflets giving details of the Congress’s Nyay guarantees,” local Congress leader Raman Vyas told The Federal.

“Mushkil chunav hai par Raja saheb ke aane se Congress takkar mei aa gayi hai (it’s a difficult election but the candidature of Raja saheb has brought the Congress into the fight),” says Dinesh Kushwaha, a resident of Iklera village that falls in the Susner assembly segment of Rajgarh; a statement that’s oft-heard across the constituency. In his pithy yet accurate comment, Kushwaha sums up the Rajgarh contest.

Raja saheb’s writ may have once run large across Rajgarh but that was, as Digvijaya concedes “two generations ago” – a different and distant era. He had last contested and won the Rajgarh seat, albeit by a narrow margin of just around 1,500 votes, back in 1991.

Between 1993 and 2003, when he served as MP CM and later when he went on a decade-long self-imposed exile from electoral politics, Digvijaya’s younger brother, Laxman Singh, wrested Rajgarh five times – the first four as a Congress candidate and the last as a nominee of the BJP. In 2009, with Laxman entering the fray again as a BJP candidate (he later switched back to the Congress), Digvijaya backed the candidature of his confidante and local Congress leader Narayan Amlabe, who emerged victorious.

Modi 'magic'

Yet, neither Digvijaya and Laxman nor Amlabe ever bagged Rajgarh with the massive victory margins that Rodmal Nagar has to his credit.

Rajgarh voters, including BJP workers, concede that Nagar’s impressive victories were “entirely” due to the saffron tsunami that Narendra Modi had swirled up. It is, however, equally undeniable that the Congress, since 2014, has weakened considerably in Rajgarh (and elsewhere across MP) – in equal parts due to the organisational inertia and morass that the Grand Old Party has plunged into and the overarching Hindu consolidation behind the BJP.

In last December’s MP assembly polls, the BJP bagged six of Rajgarh’s eight assembly segments. Digvijaya’s son, Jaivardhan Singh, who had won the Raghogarh assembly seat in the previous two assembly polls with impressive margins, managed only a narrow victory margin of 4,500 votes while Congress candidate Bhairon Singh won the Susner seat.

Laxman Singh, who was seeking re-election from the Chachoura assembly segment, lost the election by a margin of over 60000 votes against BJP’s Priyanka Penchi while Digvijaya’s nephew Priyavrat Singh lost his sitting seat of Khilchipur to the BJP’s Hajari Lal Dangi by a margin over 13,000 votes.

Steady exodus to BJP

In the aftermath of the poll rout, the MP Congress has been witnessing an exodus of leaders and workers to the BJP. These include several party members from Rajgarh and around, who were once close to Digvijaya. Jyotiraditya Scindia, who had quit the Congress to join the BJP in 2021, has been systematically wooing people close to Digvijaya into the saffron fold.

“Scindia has been specifically wooing those close to Digvijaya. Even before the assembly polls, he got Hirendra Singh “Bunty Bana” (son of former Congress MLA and Digvijaya’s distant cousin late Mool Singh) into the BJP... Bunty bana contested against Jaivardhan from Raghogarh and almost defeated him; a few months back Scindia also got another close relative of Digvijaya, Sumer Singh, to join the BJP... there is no guarantee of how long even Laxman Singh will remain in the Congress as he had been with the BJP in the past too... Digvijaya’s hold has been weakening steadily and that is why he has to go door to door asking for votes this time,” Suresh Raghuvanshi, a BJP worker from Chachoura told The Federal.

“Woh daur alag tha jab Raja saheb ka jalwa tha, ab Modi ka daur hai (that was a different era what Raja saheb held sway over Rajgarh, now it is Modi’s era),” said Ramesh Dangi, a resident of Kelwa village in Rajgarh. Dangi says he has “huge respect” for Digvijaya and claims that Nagar has been an “absentee MP” who has “not done anything for Rajgarh in the past 10 years” but asserts, in the same breath, that he would still “vote for the BJP”.

Absconding Rajgarh MP

“We have nothing against Raja saheb but we want Modi to become Prime Minister again and we will vote for BJP,” Dangi said. Even local BJP workers agree that Nagar has been a “bad MP” who “should have been dropped by the party”.

Some months ago, posters variously declaring the BJP MP as “absconding” and “missing” had come up across Rajgarh. Though Nagar claims that these were “put up by Congress members on instructions from Digvijaya and Jaivardhan”, local BJP workers told The Federal, “the posters were not wrong... Rodmal is rarely seen in Rajgarh; he was not even expecting to get a ticket again”.

Interestingly, Nagar doesn’t even seem to make an effort to rebut the criticism coming his way. Addressing a public meeting in Biaora, he tells an agitated crowd “pichli bhool chook maaf karke iss baar jitwa do (forgive my past mistakes and help me win this time)”.

Later, he tells The Federal, “I am not asking for votes for myself. I am only asking for votes for Modi ji’s third term” – a tragic commentary on how an incumbent MP’s accountability to his electorate has taken a backseat in much of India’s Hindi Heartland with the BJP seeking to turn elections into a Presidential style contest where Modi and not the actual candidate matters.

Paanch Nyay

Digvijaya, on his part, has been focusing his campaign around the Paanch Nyay and Pachchees Guarantees that the Congress has enumerated in its manifesto. He believes that while his extensive padyatra across Rajgarh will help him gain the voters’ confidence through “sampark, samvaad, samanvaya, samanjasya aur sakaratmakta (contact, conversation, coordination, consensus and positivity), the Congress’s guarantees of creating employment, drafting a legally binding MSP framework, offering financial aid to women and conducting a nation-wide caste census, among others, will “triumph over the fake propaganda of the BJP”.

In his interaction with voters, Digvijaya routinely questions what the incumbent Rajgarh MP has done for them; assiduously attempting to pivot the electoral battle as one that is ‘Digvijaya versus Rodmal Nagar’ and not ‘Digvijaya versus Modi’.

A vocal critic of EVM voting, the Congress veteran had also tried to force a vote through ballot paper, asking for “at least 400 people” to come forward and file nominations for the elections – as per the current voting system, EVMs cannot sync more than 384 candidates in a single constituency making voting through paper ballots inevitable if there are over 384 approved candidates.

With four days left for the last date for filing nominations, Digvijaya’s plan to get 400 people to enter the Rajgarh contest doesn’t seem to be realising. He has, thus, been urging supporters to ensure “effective booth management” so that Congress voters turn out in huge numbers and then, once voting in Rajgarh concludes on May 7, to maintain a strict vigil outside EVM strong rooms until June 4, when the votes will be counted.