Digamber Singh (1 October 1951 - 27 October 2017) was an Indian politician, who served as a Cabinet Minister in the Government of Rajasthan. Singh spent over two decades as a Member of the Legislative Assembly, representing the Kumher Assembly constituency, later renamed as Deeg-Kumher. He held numerous imperative Cabinet portfolios in the Government of Rajasthan, including Minister of Health, Ayurveda, Family Welfare and from 2009 onwards as the Minister of Industries.
He was the Chairman of the Twenty Point Programme and held additional charges of the Ministries of Panchayati raj, Law, Agriculture and Social justice in the Government of Rajasthan. A prominent Jat leader, Singh was considered the face of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Eastern Rajasthan.
Early life and education
Digamber Singh was born on 1 October 1951 to a Hindu Jat family in the Bharatpur village of Barkhera Faujdar in Rajasthan. He was the second of six children. His father, Jawahar Singh, was a ‘Patwaari’ and his mother, Ramkali Devi, a home maker. His early education took place in Nagar, Rajasthan and secondary education in Jaipur. In 1973, he completed his MMBS from Dr. Sampurnanand Medical College in Jodhpur, Rajasthan.
Shortly after obtaining a degree in surgery and medicine, Singh began experiencing symptoms of muscle weakness and regular fatigue, and was hospitalised in AIIMS for a stroke. He convalesced at a hospital in New Delhi for a little less than a year before continuing his treatment at home. It took approximately two years to make a full recovery.
Medicine
Singh joined the state government's Department of Medicine as an obstetrician in 1977, initially in Nagar tehsil and later Kumher in Bharatpur, Rajasthan. In 1985, he left to open a private hospital, Shree Digamber Hospital, in Bharatpur. It is now known as the Shree Digamber Group of Hospitals. His years as an active medical practitioner are believed to have paved way for his political career. He resigned from the Department of Medicine in 1992 to pursue politics.
Political career
Early career
Singh joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the late 1980s and served as the party's Bharatpur president between 1994 and 1997. Although, he is said to have been hesitant from stepping into politics, he was convinced by party leaders as Om Prakash Mathur and Lalit Kishore Chaturvedi. He was elected to the 10th Rajasthan National Assembly in 1993 from Kumher at the age of 43. He stood for Lok Sabha in the 1996 general election but lost to Natwar Singh. He was re-elected to the Rajasthan National Assembly in 1998 and, as an opposition leader, was critical of the state congress government's negligence towards development projects in eastern Rajasthan.
Minister of Health, Ayurveda & Family Welfare
In 2003, he won a seat in the assembly elections from Kumher for the third consecutive time and was further appointed Minister of Health and Family Welfare in the Government of Rajasthan under Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. During Singh's tenure, there were multiple government poverty relief schemes and programmes in Rajasthan, such as free testing for dengue to help control the disease.
In 2007, Singh introduced a programme to improve government health facilities and opened services centres at the panchayat level with the intention of making it more accessible to the poor. In 2008, along with Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, Singh launched the Rajasthan-Norway joint health programme, which aimed to eradicate polio and modernise existing facilities and infrastructure.
In 2016, during Rajendra Singh Rathore's tenure as Health Minister, a major strike of resident doctors and staff was called-off after Singh brokered a deal between the government and the unions.
In 2006, Dr. Digamber Singh, launched a state-wide mission to build stat-of-the-art medical research facilities in Rajasthan. Singh believed in strengthening the inventory capacity of the state medical staff by providing them research facilities and resources to undertake pioneering medical research.
On 15 August 2006, Singh inaugurated the latest bypass surgery facilities, established by Bharat Vikas Parishad Hospital and Research Centre, in New Delhi, a subsidiary of the facilities in Kota, Rajasthan.
Dr. Singh's tenure as Health Minister is also recalled for its crackdown on illegal and criminal medical practises in the state. Singh would monthly review data on criminal cases being reported in hospitals and government medical facilities in the state. These review meetings would often include district-level officers as Collectors and SPs, who were immediately instructed to take action.