Digvijaya Singh's 'Fact-Check' Triggers Congress Meltdown, Draws Rare BJP Praise

Digvijaya Singh, for decades one of the BJP's favourite targets, is suddenly being praised by ruling party leaders in Madhya Pradesh.

02 Jul 2026, 09:15 · www.ndtv.com

Bhopal:

Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh, for decades one of the BJP's favourite targets, is suddenly being praised by ruling party leaders. The compliments, however, have come at a cost. Singh now finds himself under fire from leaders within his own party.

The latest twist came when BJP MLA Pritam Lodhi openly offered Singh a place in the BJP. Calling the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister a "good elderly man" who helps everyone, the BJP MLA claimed that Congress leaders were not allowing Singh to thrive despite his decades of service.

If Singh crossed over to the BJP, Lodhi suggested, he would be treated "like royalty".

Congress leader Ravi Saxena hit back, saying Digvijaya Singh's "DNA is rooted in the Congress". Describing him as a loyal soldier of the party, Saxena said Singh was the kind of leader who kept the BJP "trembling." He advised the BJP to stop dreaming that the Congress veteran would ever join its ranks.

Yet the fact that the BJP is publicly praising Singh while sections of the Congress are attacking him tells its own story.

At the centre of the storm is the Veer Bharat Nyas land controversy in Ujjain. On June 24, Madhya Pradesh Congress president Jitu Patwari, along with party media department chairman Pawan Khera, addressed a press conference in Delhi after a national daily's investigation on land purchases linked to Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav and his family's real estate firms in Ujjain.

Patwari went a step further and alleged that government land worth around Rs 500 crore in Ujjain had been handed over to a trust named Veer Bharat Nyas for a token amount of just Rs 1. He said Shriram Tiwari, cultural advisor to the chief minister, was associated with the trust and asked on what basis such expensive land was allotted.

But just a couple of days later, Digvijaya Singh addressed journalists in Ujjain and took a position that appeared to puncture his own party chief's charge. "It is being alleged that land worth Rs 500 crore has been rendered to a private trust for Rs 1 only. But I have all relevant papers with me, which establish that the concerned land hasn't been given to any private trust. The concerned trust is a government trust," Singh said.

He added that he did not speak on any issue without proper research. According to him, the papers showed that the trust was a government trust whose ex-officio chairman was the state chief minister. He also remarked, "There isn't a dearth of dalals who make false accusations and then earn money."

The statement landed like a political grenade inside the Congress camp.

While Patwari stood by his allegations, murmurs began within the state unit that Singh's remarks had amounted to a public rebuttal of the state Congress president. The veteran leader then repeated a similar position before journalists in Barwani district on Monday, deepening the unease.

Singh, however, added an important detail. He said the information on which Patwari had based his allegations had originally come from a BJP MLA and from a report in a local newspaper. "The same information was given to me also by the BJP MLA, who is not on good terms with Chief Minster Dr Mohan Yadav. But when I researched the entire issue, I found that the trust in question was actually a government trust," Singh said.

For the BJP, this was a gift.

State BJP media in-charge Ashish Usha Agrawal posted on X that "the lifespan of a lie is not very long" and claimed that the campaign Jitu Patwari was trying to present as truth had been deflated by none other than Digvijaya Singh himself.

BJP spokesperson Dr Hitesh Bajpai and Huzur MLA Rameshwar Sharma, both known in the past for sharply attacking Singh on several issues, also complimented him for "showing the mirror" to Congress leaders making what they called false allegations.

BJP spokesperson Dr Hitesh Bajpai also complimented Singh, saying the former chief minister had "shown the mirror" to his own party leaders. Bajpai argued that Congress leaders were making allegations without proper verification, while Singh had at least looked at the papers before speaking publicly.

Huzur MLA Rameshwar Sharma, another BJP leader who has frequently attacked Digvijaya Singh on several political and ideological issues, also praised him for taking what the BJP described as a fact-based position. Sharma said Singh had exposed the hollowness of Patwari's allegations and had forced the Congress to confront its own internal contradictions.

The optics were extraordinary. BJP leaders who had routinely used Singh as a political punching bag were now praising his "research," while his own colleagues were privately and publicly accusing him of damaging the party's anti-corruption campaign.

The discomfort became more visible on Tuesday during a meeting of the Congress political affairs committee at the party headquarters in Bhopal. MLA Arif Masood and former legislator Praveen Pathak reportedly raised the issue, arguing that if Singh had reservations about the party chief's stand, he should have expressed them on an internal forum instead of contradicting Patwari in public.

The sharpest attack came from Congress general secretary Nidhi Chaturvedi, daughter of former Congress MP Satyavrat Chaturvedi. In a long social media post, she asked, "When will Congress get free from the Naagpash of Digvijaya Singh?"

By Tuesday evening, both Patwari and Singh appeared together before journalists in an attempt to contain the damage. "The entire Congress party in Madhya Pradesh is united in the fight against the corruption of the Dr Mohan Yadav government. All complaints related to land deals by the state's Chief Minister and his family are being probed at our level. We all will unitedly fight a definite battle on the issue," the two leaders said.

Singh also sought to clarify the "dalal" remark, which had triggered resentment inside the party. "Confusion is being spread about differences between me and state party chief Jitu Patwari. He is like my son. I have spent more than half a century in the Congress party. I can never use the word dalal for any leader of the party, including the state party chief," he said.

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