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Updated: Sep 17, 2019 18:35 IST

Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said on Tuesday people wearing saffron clothes were committing rapes and that rapes were happening inside temples, triggering another showdown with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

A member of the Rajya Sabha, Digvijaya Singh made the comments while addressing a congregation of saints in Madhya Pradesh’s capital Bhopal, The event was organised by the state’s adhyatmik vibhag or spiritual department.

“People in saffron robes are selling ‘churan’. People in saffron clothes are committing rapes. Rapes are taking place in temples. Even God will not forgive them who are defaming Sanatan dharma,” Digvijaya Singh said.

The BJP accused Digvijaya Singh, a former chief minister of the central state, of painting all saints as “criminals”.

“Digvijaya Singh has again dared to defame the saffron. He is trying to dub the entire sant samaj (the community of saints) as criminals. This is highly objectionable and condemnable,” the BJP’s spokesperson in MP Rajneesh Agrawal said.

The spokesperson of the state unit of Digvijaya Singh’s Congress party, Shobha Oza, said that the senior leader was misconstrued.

“He must have got in his mind certain people like Chinmayanand and certain others who in the disguise of a saint abuse the religion with their misdeeds. The interpretation might have gone wrong,” Shobha Oza said.

She was referring to BJP leader in Uttar Pradesh, Swami Chinmayanand, who has been accused by a 23-year-old woman of raping her for more than a year.

Earlier this month, Digvijaya Singh had triggered another controversy by accusing the BJP and Bajrang Dal of taking money from Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He could be heard saying in a widely shared video that non-Muslims spy for ISI more than Muslims while speaking at a function to unveil a statue of Maharana Pratap.

“My fight with the RSS and the BJP is of ideology. Whoever has been caught for spying for Pakistan... Bajrang Dal and BJP are taking money from the ISI. Please pay attention to this also. Non-Muslims are spying for Pakistan’s ISI more than Muslims,” Singh had said.

He later took to Twitter to clarify his original remarks. “Some (TV) channels are running (a story) that I have accused BJP of spying for ISI after taking money. This is completely wrong,” he tweeted in Hindi.

“MP police arrested Bajrang Dal (activist) and BJP IT cell office-bearer on charges of spying for ISI after taking money. I have levelled this charge and stick to it. Why don’t channels ask this question to the BJP?” he had said in another tweet.

The Congress leader was defeated in the April-May Lok Sabha election by the BJP’s Pragya Singh Thakur. Singh lost the election from the Bhopal parliamentary constituency to Thakur by more than 350,000 votes.