By IANS,
Raipur: Digvijay Singh during his seven years as chief minister of undivided Madhya Pradesh had “systematically exploited the natural resources of Chhattisgarh”, Chief Minister Raman Singh said Monday in a sharp attack on the Congress leader.
“During seven years of his tenure as the CM of undivided Madhya Pradesh, Digvijay Singh systematically exploited the natural resources of Chhattisgarh without ploughing anything back into this region,” Singh said in an article distributed to the media Monday.
The article titled, “Honey, I Sunk Bastar”, is written by Raman Singh in reply to the Congress general secretary’s article in a national daily in which he attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime for the poverty in Maoist-insurgency hit Bastar.
Raman Singh said, “The seven years of Digvijay Singh’s regime, during undivided Madhya Pradesh, are considered a dark age in the history of Chhattisgarh.”
Digvijay Singh was chief minister for 10 years, December 1993 to November 2003, and of that seven years as chief minister of undivided Madhya Pradesh. The state was split in November 2000 to create a new state Chhattisgarh.
Referring to Digvijay Singh’s stint at the state’s helm, Raman Singh said in his article: “During his tenure, Bastar was treated as ‘Kalapani’ of Madhya Pradesh and was used only for punishing inconvenient officials. The administrative phrase during those days was – ‘Fall in line or you will be dumped in Bastar’. Digvijay Singh did colossal damage to the fabric of Bastar and took it back to the medieval ages.”
He further wrote that here were “several inputs on Naxals (Maoists) consolidating their presence in existing areas and also making inroads into new areas in the region but Digvijay Singh’s government slept over it.”