Digvijay Singh

Bhopal: The self-styled godman who had vowed to take ‘samadhi’ if his ‘havan’ (ritual burning of offerings) failed to ensure victory for Congress veteran Digvijay Singh in Bhopal in the just concluded Lok Sabha elections, on Friday announced to execute his promise here on June 16 in the wake of the latter’s defeat, leaving the local administration in a tizzy.

In a letter to Bhopal Collector, the seer who introduced him as “Swami Sri Sri 1008 Bairagyanand Giri Purb (ex) Mahamandaleswar (a title) Niranjan Akhra” said he decided to carry out his vow by taking ‘samadhi’ here at exactly 2.11 hrs on June 16.

The seer said he needed to keep his promise as a saint and sought co-operation from the local district administration by identifying the site of his ‘Samadhi’ to honour his religious sentiments.

Bairagyanand had performed ‘mirch yagna’ (ritual burning of chilli) here in the run up the May 12 polls in Bhopal to invoke divine blessings to ensure Mr Singh’s victory. Mr Singh lost the polls to BJP’s Pragya Singh Thakur by a huge margin of over 3.66 lakh votes. The seer had, however, ‘disappeared’ after Singh lost the polls.

A purported audio later came to surface in which he was heard telling a person who reminded him of his vow, that it was not binding on him to fulfill his promise.