Ready to contest against Scindia in Guna in 2024 if party tells me: Digvijaya Singh

Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh said he is ready to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls against Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna constituency if the party asks him to.

Singh was answering a query in this regard during a press conference in Seoni on Tuesday. The Congress leader is currently on a tour to the 66 assembly constituencies in Madhya Pradesh where Congress lost three or more times, in a bid to strengthen the party's presence in these areas.

Currently, both Scindia and Singh are Rajya Sabha members elected from Madhya Pradesh in June 2020 and will still have more than a year of membership when the Lok Sabha polls are scheduled to be held in April/May 2024.

Guna is a former bastion of Scindia, but he lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by more than a lakh votes as a Congress candidate to BJP’s K.P. Yadav, his former protégé. Yadav had joined the BJP ahead of the LS polls after falling out with Scindia.

This Lok Sabha loss of Scindia was considered to be one of the major factors that led him to defect to the BJP with 22 Congress MLAs in March 2020. He was immediately offered a Rajya Sabha candidature by the BJP and was later made a Union minister – something the Congress claims was part of a deal for the defection.

Singh himself had contested from the Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency, a BJP bastion, in 2019. Though Singh was considered a tough contender, the BJP’s step to pitch Pragya Bharti – a staunch right-winger – against him had paid off with Bharti winning the seat by a huge margin.

While answering the query on whether he would be willing to contest the Lok Sabha elections against Scindia from Guna in 2024, Singh quipped, “I will do anything the party orders me to.” He then added that he was a Rajya Sabha member and did not have to contest the general elections, but was a true soldier of the party and would do whatever the party directed him to do.

During the press conference, Singh exuded confidence that the Congress will form government in the state after voting in November 2023 as people are very angry with the current BJP dispensation. “People are angry with (chief minister) Shivraj Singh Chouhan, with BJP, with the corrupt practices in BJP, with price rise, unemployment, injustice, and harassment. Innocent Congress leaders are being harassed, their land grabbed, houses demolished, and they are arrested for false criminal cases. People are angry because of all of these,” he claimed.

He further said the BJP government does not administer but does business that too in partnership; with CM, ministers, senior officers, BJP brokers, BJP MLAs and leaders as partners. “There is a commission taken for everything at every level. There has been no action against the corrupt people. Those who gave money in the Vyapam scam were arrested, but the investigation against those who took the money was not completed,” Singh said.