Rahul Gandhi publicly reprimands Digvijaya Singh, but will he listen?

New Delhi: Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi has publicly reprimanded senior colleague Digvijaya Singh for questioning the surgical strikes but is this enough?

Singh is known for putting his party in a spot and perhaps this is not the first time that he has been publicly snubbed. The former Madhya Pradesh chief minister is a repeat offender.

While the Congress had often distanced itself from his remarks, Singh too on many occasions was forced to retract his statements.

But that hasn’t stopped him from courting controversies with his remarks.

During the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, Singh had taken on the then-home minister and party colleague P Chidambaram on the Naxal issue. In a signed article in the Economic times in April 2010, Digvijaya Singh had then accused Chidambaram of being extremely rigid, intellectually arrogant and adopting a counterproductive policy. Singh had embarrassed the government and the party as well.

The then Congress president Sonia Gandhi had backed Chidambaram and directed Singh to not go public with his irresponsible comments. But Singh didn’t stop. He continued with his controversial statements.

In 2021 during a conversation with Shahzeb Jillani, a Pakistani journalist, on the Clubhouse app, Singh claimed that the Congress party will certainly have to relook at the abrogation of Article 370.

Prior to that in 2019, he had reportedly stated that the radicalisation of Hindus is as dangerous as the radicalisation of Muslims. In September 2019, Singh said that some saffron-clad people were committing rapes by defaming the Sanatan Dharma and that rapes are taking place in temples.

In June 2019, Singh had accused the BJP and the Bajrang Dal of taking money from Pakistan’s spy agency ISI and in May 2017 he had stoked controversy by claiming that the Telangana police had set up a “bogus” ISIS website to radicalise Muslim youth and encourage them to join the terrorist outfit.

In August 2016, Singh once referred to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) as India-occupied-Kashmir. However, he later clarified that he meant to say PoK and that Kashmir is an integral part of India. He even once referred to Osama bin Laden as “Osamaji" and Hafiz Saeed as ‘saheb’.

Singh had in July 2015 courted controversy by saying, in a series of tweets, that the credibility of government and judiciary was at stake after the urgency shown in 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon’s case.

In July 2013, Singh alleged that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sangh trains its activists in making bombs. In another remark, he claimed that the Batla House encounter was fake. Around the same time, his 'sexist remarks' against the then Congress MP from Mandsaur, Meenakshi Natrajan, calling her a ‘tanch maal’, had evoked strong reactions from a cross-section of people, including those from the Congress.

Also in July 2013, he had alleged that the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi had links to the Bodh Gaya blasts. Singh triggered a political debate in May 2013 when he questioned the Supreme Court's criticism of the CBI and called it a "caged parrot".

In April 2013, he accused Modi of hiring public relations companies to boost his image and spreading wrong facts about the state and in March same year, he said two power centres — a reference to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi -- had not worked well and it should change in future.

In January 2011, Singh had claimed that hours before the 26/11 attacks, slain Mumbai top police officer Hemant Karkare had called him and said that his life was under threat and in December 2010, he had accused BJP leaders, such as LK Advani, of planting secret agents in government and the media.

So, the question is will he listen to Rahul Gandhi this time?