Digvijaya Singh Is Congress' Pick For Rajgarh Lok Sabha Seat: 5 Facts

Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh will contest the Lok Sabha elections 2024 from the Rajgarh seat. The veteran Congress leader, who represented Rajgarh in Parliament back in the 1980s and early 90s, is returning to his home turf after three decades.

Here are five facts about the Congress veteran:

1. Digvijaya Singh was born on February 28, 1947, in Indore. He studied at Daly College and later at the Shri Govindram Seksaria Institute of Technology and Science (SGSITS) in Indore, where he earned his degree in Mechanical Engineering. His father, Balbhadra Singh, was the ‘king' of Raghogarh in the Gwalior State (currently Guna district). He was also elected an MLA from the Raghogarh Assembly seat as an Independent after the 1951 elections. 

2. The Congress leader's first brush with politics came at a very young age when he was elected as the president of the Raghogarh Municipal Council in 1969. He was 22 years old at the time. In 1977, he was elected to the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly as a Congress candidate from Raghogarh, a seat previously held by his father. In 1980, he joined Arjun Singh's Cabinet and was re-elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly.

3. In 1984, Digvijaya Singh was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Rajgarh seat. In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi nominated Digvijaya Singh as the president of the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee, a position he held until 1988 and was re-elected to in 1992. After losing the 1989 Lok Sabha polls, Mr Singh wrested the Rajgarh seat for a second term in 1991. A couple of years later, he returned to state politics.  

4. Mr Singh served as the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh for 10 years from 1993 to 2003. After losing power in the state, he pledged to not contest polls for the next 10 years. He, however, served the Congress as its General Secretary from 2004 to 2018, handling party work across several states, including Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Goa. He was part of a committee appointed by Rahul Gandhi in preparation for the General Elections in 2014.

5. Digvijaya Singh currently serves as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha and is a permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee, the party's highest decision-making body.