Rajya Sabha MP Amar singh, who passed away in a hospital in Singapore on Saturday, was a key figure during Manmohan Singh’s 10-year Government between 2004 and 2014. He played a key role in bringing together the Congress and the SP in 2008 after the Communist Party of India withdrew support following a nuclear deal with the United States.
In 2011, Amar Singh was sent to the Tihar Jail in Delhi facing charges of corruption in the infamous ‘cash for vote case’. Amar Singh was accused of bribing three MPs to vote for the Manmohan Singh-led UPA1 government during the trust vote after the Left parties withdrew support from the UPA following the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Deal.
Singh was elected to Rajya Sabha for the first time in 1996. In politics, Singh always professed personal loyalty to Mulayam Singh Yadav even after he was expelled from the party in 2010, when the SP chief’s son Akhilesh Yadav asserted control over the party. There were allegations that Amar Singh was trying to create a rift within the party and the Yadav family in particular, while others alleged that he was himself warming up to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
The SP, then headed by Mulayam, expelled Amar Singh, his protege Jayaprada and four MLAs from the party’s primary membership on charges of indulging in “anti-party activities”. The former SP leader, however, had praised party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav while he was leaving, with a parting note: “I am blessed by him... he has given me liberation.”
Singh and the Bachchans too were very close at one point. However, in 2016, their relationship hit a rough patch after Singh went public with his complaints against Jaya Bachchan, a SP leader. In 2017, Singh had also claimed that Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan were living separately, and also hinted at a rift between Jaya Bachchan and daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
When Amitabh Bachchan’s name cropped up in the Panama leak, Singh had said, “There is stoic silence on part of Bachchan on Panama case which will make a nayak look like
khalnayak.” Singh went on to add that as a fan, he wanted his hero, Amitabh Bachchan, to be clean.
In February this year, he released a video expressing “regret” over his behaviour towards Amitabh Bachchan and his family.
The former Samajwadi Party leader recorded and posted the video on his Facebook account after receiving Bachchan’s message on the death anniversary of his father.
He was first elected to Rajya Sabha in 2016 but this was possible only after Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam singh Yadav backed his candidature.
He floated his own political outfit Rashtriya Lok Manch in 2011 and fielded candidates in UP?assembly polls in 2012 without any luck. In 2014, he joined Jat leader Ajit Singh’s party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal.
