Diggy’s salvo: Should Kejriwal dignify him with a response?

The Congress’s official loose cannon Digvijaya Singh comments - he has one too many on everything political - don’t usually deserve to be dignified with a response. But give it to the man, he never tires. He is a nag and he will keep chipping away at the target till the latter finds it too uncomfortable to stay un-different. It works for him all the time. He gets nasty rebuttals but it’s par for the course for the seasoned politician. He loves getting on the nerves of others and rattling them a bit. Last year, when everyone in the Congress was running scared of Team Anna, the irrepressible Digvijaya Singh was gleefully into the act, throwing allegations at Anna Hazare. He called the Gandhian an RSS agent, dispatched a damning open letter to him, warned that he would be force-fed if he did not end his fast and even said his methods did not make him a Gandhian at all. Under a barrage of attack, the harried Anna had to respond. “Digvijaya should be sent to a mental asylum,’’ he said. [caption id=“attachment_496939” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Digvijaya Singh. PTI.[/caption] Earlier, when Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev was driving the UPA leaders mad with his antics at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi, Digvijaya was launching the lone counterattack against him. He called Ramdev a ’thug’ and dug up serious dirt on him. It did not have much impact on the developments of the day but he was doing a good job of tarnishing the image of the crusader. The Congress never openly backed his attacks but hardly condemned his hitting below-the-belt tactic either. He is back doing what he is good at again - throwing muck. The target this time is Arvind Kejriwal. In a letter to the activist-turned-politician he has called him a “self-serving ambitious megalomaniac having streak of Hitler.’’ “When YP Singh (retd IPS), your former colleague in civil society movement, called you a Hitler, I could see the streak in you… My opinion about you of a well-meaning crusader of public issues has now changed,” he said. Not that his opinion matters. But the timing of the attack is immaculate. Kejriwal is not at his strongest now, particularly after his lacklustre attack against BJP president Nitin Gadkari and allegations of illegalities against his own team members. Moreover, there are questions being raised over his hit-and-run tactic where he makes allegations against political biggies but refuses to take the matter to court. For the first time, he is under cloud of questions. Digvijaya wants to pile more misery on him and cause some damage to his image, which so far remains above suspicion. The Congress general secretary gets personal too, raising questions on the character of Kejriwal. “You could not get along with Aruna Roy, who was your guru in RTI movement. Then you parted ways with Kiran Bedi and now, also with Anna whom you used as a front to give your ambitions a touch of respectability,” he wrote. He added that the activist wanted to be a member of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council and had approached him to make a request on his behalf to the UPA chairperson. Kejriwal would be better off not reacting to Digvijaya’s charges. He would look up end up looking foolish otherwise. He has already walked into a trap led by the Congress by trying to be neutral in his political attacks and trying to target Nitin Gadkari. If enters a war of words with the rabble-rouser he might end up being the injured party. Digvijaya has nothing to lose in terms of credibility, which is pretty low. If Kejriwal loses it he will find it difficult to recover. He should allow the loose cannon to remain one.