Digvijaya Singh (born 28 February 1947) is an Indian politician of the Indian National Congress who was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh for two terms, from 1993 to 2003. The head of the former princely family of Raghogarh, he later became a general secretary of his party and one of its most outspoken voices, a sharp critic of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He sat in the Rajya Sabha from 2014 to 2026.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Digvijaya Singh |
| Born | 28 February 1947, Indore, Madhya Pradesh |
| Age | 79 |
| State | Madhya Pradesh |
| Education | Daly College, Indore; Shri Govindram Seksaria Institute of Technology and Science, Indore (B.E.) |
| Party | Indian National Congress |
| Offices | Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh (1993–2003); Member of the Rajya Sabha (2014–2026); Member of the Lok Sabha for Rajgarh (1984–1989, 1991–1994) |
| Spouse | Asha Singh (d. 2013); Amrita Rai (m. 2015) |
| Children | 5 |
Early Life
He was born in Indore, the son of Balbhadra Singh, the last ruler of Raghogarh, a small state in the Guna district of central India. He was educated at Daly College in Indore and took a degree in mechanical engineering. At school and college he was a sportsman, playing cricket, hockey and squash.
Career
Beginnings
He was president of the Raghogarh municipal council from 1969 and was elected to the Madhya Pradesh assembly from Raghogarh in 1977, in an election the Congress lost almost everywhere else in north India. He was a minister under Arjun Singh, who became his mentor, in the early 1980s, and won the Lok Sabha seat of Rajgarh in 1984. He became president of the state Congress.
Chief Minister
The Congress won the election of 1993, and he was sworn in on 7 December. He won again in 1998.
- **Panchayati raj:** Madhya Pradesh was the first state to hold elections to village councils under the new constitutional amendment, and he transferred powers and funds to them
- **Education Guarantee Scheme:** a promise that any village without a school would get one within ninety days of asking, with a locally appointed teacher; it raised literacy markedly
- **Other measures:** watershed missions, a charter for Dalit rights, and district government
On 1 November 2000 the eastern districts were separated as Chhattisgarh, under Ajit Jogi.
His second term ended badly. Roads were poor and power cuts long, and in December 2003 the Congress was routed by a campaign led by Uma Bharti. He announced that he would not hold or seek any office for ten years, and kept to it.
National role
As a general secretary of the All India Congress Committee he was put in charge of the party in several states, among them Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Goa. He was regarded as close to Rahul Gandhi.
His remarks have often caused trouble for his party as well as his opponents: questioning the police account of an encounter in Delhi in 2008, and asking for proof of the cross-border strikes of 2016 and 2019. He holds that the ideology of the Sangh is the chief danger to the country.
Narmada Parikrama
From September 2017 to April 2018, at seventy, he walked the length of both banks of the Narmada, about 3,300 kilometres, with his wife, in fulfilment of a religious vow. The journey through more than a hundred assembly constituencies was credited with reviving the Congress organisation before its victory in the state later that year.
Elections lost
He was defeated at Bhopal in the Lok Sabha election of 2019 and at Rajgarh in 2024. His second term in the Rajya Sabha ended in June 2026, and he did not seek another.
Personal Life
His first wife, Asha, died in 2013. In 2015 he married Amrita Rai, a television journalist. He has a son, Jaivardhan Singh, a legislator from Raghogarh and former minister, and four daughters. His brother Lakshman Singh has also been a legislator and member of Parliament.
Madhya Pradesh is now led by Mohan Yadav.
Featured image: Digvijaya Singh. Photo by Hiteshjithakur, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
