Congress Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh on Thursday mocked his former colleague and Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia by saying the latter has been given the aviation ministry, which neither has a plane nor an airport.
Singh also said he would oppose any possible move by Scindia to return to the Congress ahead of the MP Assembly polls to be held at the end of the year.
Just a week before he quit the Congress (in early 2020), Scindia had praised the party while distributing loan waiver certificates to farmers in Karera in Shivpurit when the Kamal Nath government was in place, Singh said.
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"Then why did he leave the Congress? What did he get? A ministry without an airport and plane. Khud unhonne apne pair pe kulhari mara hai. Now if he tries to rejoin the Congress, I am going to oppose the move," Singh told reporters in Ashok Nagar district.
Singh said Scindia may have been upset that he was not made Madhya Pradesh chief minister after the Congress won the 2018 Assembly polls.
"A chief minister is elected democratically. He had only 17 MLAs out of 114 Congress legislators then. Later five MLAs got connected to him. This shows that Kamal Nath had a clear majority (among MLAs) and could not be sidelined," Singh said.
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"Kamal Nath as CM fulfilled the promises of Scindia. The entire land for Scindia school was donate for Re 1 (by the Nath government). This the Bharatiya Janata Party government could not do," he said.
Scindia, who lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Guna on a Congress ticket, should have waited instead of crossing over to the BJP, which made him a Rajya Sabha member and Civil Aviation minister, Singh said.
"We (Congress) used to call him 'maharaj' out of respect. In the BJP, he is just 'bhai saab'. The respect he got from the Congress leadership he will never get in the BJP," Singh claimed.
The Kamal Nath government fell in March 2020 after MLAs loyal to Scindia left and joined the BJP, paving the way for the return of Shivraj Singh Chouhan as CM of the state.
-With PTI Input
