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Digvijaya Singh (born 28 February 1947) is an Indian politician and a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha since 2014. He is a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and ex-general secretary of the Indian National Congress's All India Congress Committee. Previously, he had served as the 14th and 15th Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, a central Indian state, in two terms from 1993 to 1998 and from 1998 to 2003. Prior to that he was a minister in Chief Minister Arjun Singh's cabinet between 1980 and 1984. In the 2019 Indian general election he was defeated by Pragya Singh Thakur for the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat.
Singh was appointed as a member of Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE) which was constituted by Indian National Congress on 2 February 2025 to monitor the conduct of free and fair elections by the Election Commission of India.
He married Asha Singh in 1969, who died in 2013, and with whom he has four daughters and a son Jaivardhan Singh, who was member of Madhya Pradesh's 14th Vidhan Sabha serving as the Cabinet Minister of Urban Development and Housing. In April 2014, he confirmed that he was in a relationship with a Rajya Sabha TV anchor Amrita Rai; they married in late August 2015.
Being the longest west-flowing river, the Narmada parikrama is a formidable spiritual exercise and challenge—an incredible journey of about 3,300 km.
Digvijaya Singh along with his wife started the Narmada Parikrama on 30 September 2017, from Barman Ghat, on banks of river Narmada after taking the blessing of his spiritual guru Shankaracharya Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati. The journey took them from Barman Ghat, on River Narmada southern banks, all the way to its mouth at Bharuch in Gujarat. At Bharuch, Mithi Talai is the point where the Narmada joins the Arabian Sea. Here they took a motorboat from the southern to the northern end and begin the return journey along its northern bank. On 9 April 2018 they completed the narmada parikrama at Barman Ghat having covered by foot in 192 days.
He was president of the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee between 1985 and 1988, having been nominated by Rajiv Gandhi, and was re-elected in 1992. He had been elected as a member of the 8th Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India, in the Indian general election of 1984, representing the Rajgarh Lok Sabha constituency. He was the first Congress politician to win the constituency, which had been created in 1977. Having won that contest by 150,000 votes, he lost the seat to Pyarelal Khandelwal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by 57,000 votes in the 1989 general election. He regained it in 1991, becoming a member of the 10th Lok Sabha.
Chhattisgarh gained administrative independence from Madhya Pradesh in 2001 under the terms of the Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Act. Singh was directed by Sonia Gandhi to ensure the selection of Ajit Jogi as the Chief Minister for the new state and this Singh did, although Jogi had been critical of his style of politics and Singh had personally preferred not to see him installed to that office. While Singh managed to convince the majority of Congress Legislator Party members to back Ajit Jogi, the absence of Vidya Charan Shukla and his supporters at the meeting raised questions about the exercise of seeking consensus because Shukla was the other main contender for the post. Subsequently, Singh met with Shukla in order to allay concerns. Jogi govt faces instability . The Tribune, 3 November 2001
Singh won the Raghogarh constituency again in 2003 but his party overall was heavily defeated by the BJP, as it also was in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The defeat in Madhya Pradesh has been attributed in large part to deadlocks in the pursuit of development that had arisen as the Panchayati Raj and central government squabbled about the extent of their respective powers, and to frequent electrical power cuts. The latter resulted from thirty-two per cent of what had been the generation capacity of Madhya Pradesh now being in the new state of Chhattisgarh: while Chhattisgarh did not need all of that capacity, much of it had historically been used in the remainder of Madhya Pradesh, which now found itself having only around 50 per cent of the power that it required. Aditi Phadnis, a political journalist and author, also notes that in 1985, the state had been producing a surplus of electricity through a process of technical and administrative efficiency that was the envy of other areas and that then "The State Electricity Board began to be looked upon as a milch cow by successive politicians, Digvijay Singh included." Power was given away and no money was set aside for repairs and maintenance. One of Singh's last proposals while in office was to write-off the electricity bills of 1.2 million people over the preceding three years. In this, he was thwarted by the Election Commission of India, which ruled the proposal to be a breach of election rules. Singh had claimed that it was desirable because the farmers of the state — who needed electricity to power water pumps — had suffered three years of drought conditions., Santosh Kumar Shukla, Surendra Shukla and Lal Bahadur Singh (extreme left) at chief minister house, Shyamla hills Bhopal in 2002.]]
In January 2014, he was elected as a member of parliament to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh.
Singh has been criticised by his opposition for corruption, which he denied. In 2011, a charge sheet was submitted in court against him but the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) determined in March 2014 that there was no case to answer.
In June 2015, Singh petitioned the Supreme Court, pleading for a CBI probe into the Vyapam scam. He claimed to have interacted with a whistleblower who had revealed sensitive information to him. The CBI dismissed the claim in November 2017, raising the possibility that Singh could be prosecuted for fabricating evidence.
In the 2019 Indian general election, he ran for Lok Sabha in the constituency of Bhopal, but lost to Pragya Singh Thakur.
In the 2024 Indian general election, he ran for Lok Sabha in the constituency of Rajgarh, and lost to BJP candidate Rodmal Nagar by a margin of 146,089 votes.
Following the November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, Singh faced widespread condemnation for launching a book which mentioned that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was somehow linked to the attack. Singh was also slammed for coining the terms "Saffron Terror" and "Hindu Terror".
A comment by Singh in 2011 led to disagreements within his party. He stated that the Batla House encounter case, which led to the death of two terrorists and one police officer, was fake. The Union Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, dismissed Singh's claim and his demand for a further judicial investigation into it. Congress rejected his views that the encounter was stage-managed, stating that the encounter should not be politicised or raked up for political gains. Singh's stand on the Batla House encounter led to criticism from the opposition BJP.
In 2013, Singh described Meenakshi Natarajan, a female Congress MP from Mandsaur, as " sau tunch maal" ("100% pure goods")—a colloquialism The Times of India described as "frequently used loosely to describe a woman as 'sexy'". Advocates for women's rights were upset by Singh's comment and called for Congress to act against him. However, the MP backed Singh and said he meant that she was like "pure gold"; The Times of India commented that " tunch maal" is "also a trade jargon among jewelers to describe the level of purity of the yellow metal" and added that Singh prefaced his comment about Natarajan by describing himself as a "political goldsmith".
Singh criticised the United States in 2011 for not respecting Osama bin Laden's religion when it buried him at sea, saying "however big a criminal one might be, his religious traditions should be respected while burying him." Congress's leadership distanced itself from his views. Singh later said that his statement should not be interpreted as support for or opposition to bin Laden, adding "I had merely said that the worst of criminals should be cremated according to their faith. He is a terrorist and he deserved the treatment that he got."
In March 2022, Digvijay Singh along with six others was sentenced for one year rigorous imprisonment by an Indore court in connection with clash with BJYM workers in 2011.
In June 2025, a special court in Jabalpur issued a defamation notice to Digvijaya Singh following allegations made during a May 2023 press conference, in which he accused BJP MLA Sushil Tiwari of misappropriating 50–60% of public distribution (PDS) food grains in his constituency. The court has scheduled the hearing for 21 July 2025.
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