Lok Sabha elections 2019: Digvijaya Singh will be Congress sword-arm in BJP’s strongest bastion

BHOPAL: Congress’s battle-hardened warhorse, Digvijaya Singh, will be fielded in one of the toughest seats in Madhya Pradesh in this Lok Sabha election. ]Sources say, the Congress high command has reportedly asked him to choose from three saffron bastions — Bhopal, Indore and Vidisha. Congress hasn’t won here in 30 years.On Saturday, chief minister Kamal Nath stunned his party colleague by saying, “Digvijaya Singh will choose which seat he wants to contest from. I have requested that he should contest from the toughest seat. There are three or four such seats, which the party has not won in the past 30 to 35 years.” The CM did not name the seats but electoral history filters it down to Bhopal, Vidisha and Indore, where BJP has been winning by huge margins. Party workers demand that the Congress veteran, who is presently a Rajya Sabha MP, should contest either from Bhopal or Indore. Digvijaya’s supporters say he would have preferred Rajgarh — which he represented in Parliament in the early Nineties.But Rahul Gandhi’s aggressive Congress is in no mood to give cake-walk constituencies to its senior leaders. “We want to win the maximum number of constituencies in Madhya Pradesh. For that, we need senior leaders to contest the tough seats which Congress party has been losing for a long time,” said state Congress media committee chairperson Shobha Oza. “Morale of party workers get boosted when senior leaders lead from the front. Why should Digvijaya Singh, with all his experience and the kind of work he has done in the state all his life, be fielded from an easy seat? Congress wants to give BJP a run for every constituency this Lok Sabha,” she explained.The talk in the Congress ranks is that if the party is serious about wresting Bhopal from BJP, then the only person capable of doing it is Digvijaya. The mathematics is simple — two ministers of the Kamal Nath cabinet (Arif Aqueel and P C Sharma) are from Bhopal, and both are known to be loyal to Digvijaya. Congress now has three of the eight assembly segments — Bhopal North (Aqueel), Bhopal South West (Sharma) and Bhopal Central (Arif Masood).State Congress leaders argue that Digvijaya, as CM for 10 years, is Congress’ best known face in Bhopal. He also has friends in BJP, like veteran Babulal Gaur, who wields massive clout in the city. In Indore, too, the feeling among Congress workers is the same — if anyone can defeat eight-times MP Sumitra Mahajan in this saffron fortress, it’s Diggy. “Digvijaya Singh may hail from Raghogarh (Guna), but he studied in Indore — Daly College and Shri Govindram Seksaria Institute of Technology and Science, where he did his BE. He regularly visits Indore and has an office there. He knows every party worker in Indore. If anyone can win Indore for Congress, it is him,” a senior state Congress leader said.