Unhappy Endings For Diggy

The media finally decided to stop playing blind and started reporting the Muzzafarnagar (UP) riots; only after a reporter was killed. Other deaths were too unimportant for them or the over 100 riots in the state in the last one year didn’t matter. The other thing that occupies headlines is the sentencing of the DelhiGangrape convicts. But an important political development has been mostly left to gossip columns. A few days back I tweeted about Digvijaya Singh being very subdued and making statements in a sulking tone. Something has changed dramatically. It would be a grave risk to write off any politician and I’m not even a political pundit like Numero Unee. But there’s a change in the media diet. Let’s catch a blast from the past first:

Whenever a political turn or event happens who do our reporters run to most? You guessed it – Digvijaya Singh. And what does he offer them? Nothing but filthy utterances against others and mindless statements that aren’t even fact-checked. His own party is on record stating that his statements are not “authorised”. Yet, DS with no political position or responsibility and clearly over-the-hill, is the Guru for most TV editors. The reporters seek his comments like Stenographers and faithfully relay it. By evening, on many occasions, based on his silly utterances, you will find DS doing a full-fledged interview with Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai or Rahul Kanwal. It’s a well-planned and organised routine.

And then channels like NDTV carry interviews without bothering to fact-check Diggy’s statements. I did recommend a lie-detector for the channel but mounting losses may delay their purchase of one. The danger of being a sycophant is that in the end the bigger sycophants win. Digvijaya Singh for long has behaved like he was the mouth piece of Rahul Gandhi. But he was overlooked and someone else was made the campaign chief of MP and possibly a CM candidate. It’s a monumental tragedy for DS and I had observed that he had suddenly become subdued since September 3. Yes indeed, Jyotiraditya Scindia who is a close confidant, friend and also RahulG’s bench-mate in Parliament took over the Congress campaign in MP. Political parties are usually slow to realise what the people already see. DS was doing bigger damage to the Congress than to any Opposition party. And it took a gossip column to report the reason for his sulking.

It’s not just the Congress; DS has caused enough damage to investigations in various terror cases by endorsing “26/11 is an RSS conspiracy” or implying “Batla house” encounter was fake. His routine jibes at Hindus through comments of “RSS bomb-making” factories and Saffron terror have made him a villain for many people. Not to forget frequently calling Yoga guru Baba Ramdev a “thug”. For the arrogance and shamelessness with which he spun silly conspiracies I had called him “India’s most communal politician”. Not just other political party members, the shameless DS had the audacity to call a female party colleague “100% Tunch Maal” and pass it off as a tribute to her. So what finally brought about this sorry state of DS? It’s not very hard to tell. But first in another edition of his hypocrisy he was blaming the BJP for Asaram not being arrested for a while. These pics show who was at the feet of Asaram for a long period.

Pics apart there is an instance where DS spoke at an Asaram function and said he looked to the Guru to improve his “Buddhi and Atma” (Youtube). Unfortunately, neither his buddhi nor his atma seems to have ever improved. An even more terrible news was that as CM of MP Diggy had given away a good chunk of land to Asaram Ashram for a mere lease of Re.1/- That is one example of his bogus governance. I have written before that in his 10 years of mis-governance in MP the man couldn’t even build a decent road between the two major cities of MP, Bhopal and Indore. And the distance is just about 170kms or so. In his typical arrogance DS said during the 2003 MP elections that election victories are “managed”. Though I do not have a link to that statement I clearly remember it.  

Diggy’s nearing end is seeing more humiliation being heaped upon him. In a most bizarre situation he was locked out of a media conference by Jyotiraditya Scindia in MP. Diggy was so unwelcome he was not even shown the door. The door just didn’t open for him. This TOI report almost makes comic reading on the plight of DS. That report was a bit hard to believe but some smaller news channel (unlike cronies and chronic liars like NDTV or CNN-IBN) had the footage of the incident. Watch the video (3.56 mins):

The MP campaign committee and Scindia seem to have told DS “don’t darken our door again”. Sometime back Diggy was all tears and sympathy for LK Advani over BJP’s appointment of Narendra Modi as its 2014 Campaign head. LKA was sulking and didn’t attend the party’s Goa meet in June 2013. DS was prompt to tell the world how BJP treated its tall leader shabbily. I wonder whose shoulder he’s going to cry on now that some doors are closed for him and he has been kept out. I guarantee Scindia has the full support of RahulG and there are no more shoulders for DS. It’s the beginning of unhappy endings. But there’s another important reason that may have finally sealed the fate of DS.

The Congress was busy passing a string of bills and policies in the run up to general elections. One of the most important decisions they made was that on Telengana and the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into two or three states. As party in-charge of AP, much of the closing negotiations on the issue with various sides were being handled by DS. The Congress should have been soaking in glory for the Telengana decision but the reality is far from it. Their Telengana decision has caused more damage than they estimated. AP is on the boil ever since that decision and even many Congressmen don’t support the decision. For once the Congress had banked on DS to come out with a right outcome. He failed. All the parties in the division of Andhra, Telengana and Hyderabad are unhappy with the proposed split. For all we know this decision may never come to be implement. This is the failure that may have finally dumped DS into the political ever-after.

The unfortunate truth is Diggy has been practically useless to the Congress since his defeat in 2003. Apart from making silly statements in the media which the party had to mostly “distance” itself from he has proved himself a spiteful and foul-mouthed politician. What happened yesterday is nothing short of extreme humiliation by his own party. This is an unhappy ending DS may not have ever dreamed of. But the political end of this man shouldn’t make anyone unhappy, least of all Congress. We have to see who the likes of Pallavi Ghosh, Barkha Dutt, Sunetra Chaudhary & their motley crew will now run to for their cheap sound-bites.