Digvijaya's defence

Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh may have been on the defensive in his comments on Narendra Modi's appointment as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP's) campaign committee chief but in his old stamping ground of Chhattisgarh, now ruled by the saffron party, he was very much on the offensive. As chief minister of undivided Madhya Pradesh, from which Chhattisgarh was carved out, Singh naturally has a fair number of supporters in the new state. But the Congress is so divided here that he was subjected to much critical innuendo from within the party during a recent visit. A senior state Congress leader, for instance, said Chhattisgarh did not need "guidance" from outsiders. Then he added for good measure that no leader from any "garh", including Raghogarh, Singh's hometown, would work for the interests of Chhattisgarh. To which Singh smilingly countered that those who opposed him either had links with the BJP or the Naxalites, leaving it to senior Congressmen to prove their credentials.