Sircilla fire guts Digvijaya Singh, Dalit face Meira sparks exit

HYDERABAD: The writing was on the wall for sometime about the ouster of Digvijaya Singh as the

AICC general secretary in-charge of Telangana

. But the final nail in the coffin was driven by former Lok Sabha speaker and Congress leader Meira Kumar, who has now positioned herself as the

Dalit face of the Congress

.

"All is not well in the Telangana Congress and Digvijaya is to blame," she reportedly briefed party president Sonia Gandhi after her visit to Sircilla in Karimnagar on Monday, during which she met a few Dalits and demanded a judicial inquiry into their torture by the police.

During his long tenure, Digvijaya turned out to be the most controversial AICC general secretary ever to administer the party in united AP and later the two Telugu states.

Appointed in 2004 as in-charge of AP, Digvijaya enjoyed a good relationship with then chief minister

Y S Rajasekhara Reddy

. However, the party high command replaced him with Ghulam Nabi Azad and Digvijaya was brought back just before the elections in 2013.

The biggest failure of the Congress under the leadership of Digvijaya was its inability to encash on the Telangana sentiment despite the fact that it was the Congress Working Committee (CWC) under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi that agreed to create Telangana. Predictably, it was routed in the residuary state of AP and could not project itself among the electorate in Telangana and got decimated here too.

But the failures continued to pile up and Digvijaya's downfall during the last several months has been swift. He was also AICC general secretary in-charge of Goa but despite the Congress emerging as the single largest party in the assembly polls earlier this year, it was outsmarted by the BJP and was forced to sit in the Opposition. In April, Digvijaya was stripped of his Goa and Karnataka responsibilities, the latter after local Congress leaders complained against his style of functioning.

In Telangana, while the Congress acted as an ineffective opposition party, Digvijaya continued to issue controversial remarks. Farmers were handcuffed, the Miyapur land scam broke out and farmers suicides continued unabated but the Congress was nowhere to be seen.

In the meantime, Digvijaya charged the Telangana police with creating a fake ISIS website so that Muslim youth can be lured to it following which they can be nabbed. This triggered a massive outcry even within the party and complaints were lodged with the party high command against his style of functioning.

Without visiting Telangana on a regular basis and leading effective campaigns against the TRS regime, Digvijaya was content with tweeting on various issues, including on the alleged involvement of top TRS leaders in the drugs racket. After Meira Kumar's visit to the state on Monday, the Congress decided enough is enough and stripped him of his Telangana charge. Strangely, it has retained the charge of Andhra Pradesh with Digvijaya, despite the Congress displaying a similar lacklustre performance as an opposition party there as in Telangana.

Having been relieved of major party responsibilities, indications are that Digvijaya will take a shot at leading the Congress in its attempts to regain power in Madhya Pradesh and towards that end, is contemplating undertaking a padayatra. But as far as Telangana is concerned, his performance as AICC general secretary in-charge of the state for the last several years has come to an inglorious end.


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