For three days, the Madhya Pradesh Congress tore itself apart in full public view over a fact-check by former Chief Minister and veteran party leader Digvijaya Singh that punctured the coordinated Opposition attack on Chief Minister Mohan Yadav over allegations of illegalities in the handing over of land worth almost Rs 500 crore to a trust.The result was a spectacle rare even by the standards of a party long accustomed to public feuding, as the BJP showered praise on Singh while his own colleagues accused him of sabotaging the party’s anti-corruption campaign to protect his son’s political ambitions.AdvertisementBy Wednesday, the Madhya Pradesh Congress had gone on a three-day Maun Satyagraha (silent satyagraha), instructing every leader to avoid television debates and giving soundbites in protest against the media’s alleged lack of interest in covering the CM’s land deals in Ujjain.Read | ‘Should we shut down for him?’: Mohan Yadav’s family on MP investigationThe trouble began on June 24, when state Congress president Jitu Patwari targeted Mohan Yadav following The Indian Express’s investigation into land purchases by his family and their real estate companies. Patwari alleged that government land worth approximately Rs 500 crore had been handed to a trust called Veer Bharat Nyas for a token sum of Re 1. “Its trustee is Shriram Tiwari, who is the Chief Minister’s cultural advisor. On what basis was such expensive land given to this trust?” Patwari had asked.It should have been a straightforward corruption accusation for the Opposition to press home their advantage. Instead, days later, Digvijaya Singh, a man the BJP has frequently targeted in the past, stood before reporters in Ujjain and, without any apparent coordination with his own party’s leadership, dismantled the allegation.Advertisement“It is being alleged that land worth Rs 500 crore has been rendered to a private trust for Re 1 only. But I have all the relevant papers with me, which establish that the concerned land hasn’t been given to any private trust. Instead, the concerned trust is a government trust. I don’t speak on any issue without proper research … There isn’t a dearth of dalals (middlemen) who make false accusations and then earn money,” said the veteran Congressman.BJP jumps inThe BJP did not let the moment pass.State BJP media in-charge Ashish Usha Agrawal posted on X that the lifespan of a lie is not long, declaring that the campaign Patwari had tried to present as truth had been deflated by none other than his party’s senior leader.Read | Buy, build, profit: How MP Chief Minister’s cousins flipped UjjainBJP spokesperson Dr Hitesh Bajpai, who has targeted Singh relentlessly over the years, suddenly found something to admire in him, saying the former CM had “shown the mirror” to his own party’s leaders. He said while Congress functionaries were making allegations without verifying documents, Singh had at least examined the papers before speaking up.Huzur MLA Rameshwar Sharma, another BJP leader with a long history of targeting Singh on ideological grounds, joined the chorus, praising him for taking what he called a fact-based position. Singh, he said, had exposed the hollowness of Patwari’s allegations, forcing the Congress to confront its own contradictions.Then came the BJP’s most audacious gesture. MLA Pritam Lodhi publicly invited Singh to switch sides, calling him a “good elderly man” who helps everyone and claiming that his own party was not letting him thrive despite decades of service. Should Singh cross over, Lodhi said, the BJP would treat him “like royalty”.Congress damage controlCongress leader Ravi Saxena moved quickly to shut that door. He said Digvijaya Singh’s “DNA is rooted in the Congress”, described him as a loyal soldier of the party, and said Singh was the kind of leader who kept the BJP “trembling”. The BJP, he said, should stop dreaming that the veteran would ever join its ranks.The sharpest blow came from Nidhi Chaturvedi, a Congress general secretary and daughter of former MP Satyavrat Chaturvedi, who used social media to launch a blistering attack on the man widely regarded as the tallest Congress leader in the state.“When will Congress be freed from ‘Naagpash’ of Digvijaya Singh. His restlessness, anger, and indecorous conduct are nothing but a highly inappropriate, distressing, and condemnable step taken out of ‘attachment to his son.’ In his ambition to seat his son, Jaivardhan Singh, in the position of state party president, he has forgotten what party discipline means,” Chaturvedi wrote.The infighting alarmed the party’s old guard. Former state Congress president and ex-Union minister Arun Yadav appealed directly to Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi to intervene, framing the episode as an act of sabotage by unnamed individuals within the party even as the BJP government battled its own troubles.This was not the ordinary noise of a fractious state unit, but the signal of a possible rupture, at the centre of which was the leader who, for the last three decades, has been considered the last word when it comes to party affairs in Madhya Pradesh. Though the party may not solely revolve around him anymore, his organisational network still runs deeper than that of any other leader in the state. He has weathered defections and election losses over the decades and has been the BJP’s favourite villain and punching bag. That is why the way the episode played out stung party leaders.By Tuesday evening, with the episode threatening to entirely eclipse its case against the CM, Patwari and Singh appeared together before reporters in a hastily arranged joint press conference, each visibly working to project a unity that the previous 48 hours had thoroughly undercut.“The entire Congress party in MP is united in the fight against the corruption of the Dr Mohan Yadav government. All complaints related to land deals by the state’s CM and his family are being probed at our level. We will all unitedly fight a definite battle on the issue,” the two leaders said in a joint statement.Singh went further to defuse the tension, insisting his comments were not aimed at Patwari or any other party colleague. The comments were aimed at a journalist whose surname is Dalal, he claimed. “Confusion is being spread about differences between Jitu Patwari and me. He is like my son. I’ve spent more than half a century in the Congress party. I can never use the word dalal for any leader of the party, including the state party chief. I used the word dalal for a journalist,” he said.