Digvijay Singh says Congress shares his view on Chidambaram

The Congress may have distanced itself from his views but party leader Digvijay Singh insists his criticism in a newspaper article of Home Minister P Chidambaram’s handling of the Maoist menace reflects the party’s policy.

The Congress may have distanced itself from his views but party leader Digvijay Singh insists his criticism in a newspaper article of Home Minister P Chidambaram’s handling of the Maoist menace reflects the party’s policy.

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“What I have written, I stand by and this is as per Congress policies,” Singh told NDTV on Saturday. Making light of his description of Chidambaram as “intellectually arrogant”, Singh said: “I don’t regret it. It is more of a comment on a friend.”

“I made that remark and then apologised and told him not to feel bad... PC has always called me an opposition leader in UPA. We have been close friends and are still close friends,” he added.

Singh said Chidambaram needed to be more receptive to ideas he was talking about, like amending the forest Act, mining Act, land acquisition Act, forceful implementation of panchayat extension in scheduled areas. He said that when he had spoken to the home minister in this regard, the latter had said: “I can’t handle this. You should talk to the prime minister.”