Remembering Amar Singh: A flamboyant politician who had businessmen and actors as his friends

Former Samajwadi Party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh died in Singapore on Saturday (August 1, 2020). He was 64. Singh had been undergoing treatment for kidney-related ailments in Singapore for a long time. He is survived by wife Pankaja and twin daughters.

Singh was born on January 27, 1956 at Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh. He completed in graduation from St. Xavier's college and done his Bachelor in Law from University College of Law, Kolkata

Singh was elected to Rajya Sabha for the first time in 1996 and in November 2002 he was reelected to Rajya Sabha. Singh entered the Rajya Sabha for his third term in November 2008 and he became a member of Upper House of Parliament on July 2016.

Singh was a flamboyant businessman-politician, who once counted India’s most influential icons from industry, politics and Bollywood among his closest friends, including megastar Amitabh Bachchan. He had been a key player in the cut and thrust of Indian politics till about a decade ago.

Back in 2008, he also helped the then Manmohan Singh government survive a crucial trust vote that eventually led to his arrest three years later. He was accused of offering bribes to three BJP MPs to get them to support the UPA.

It was a chance encounter with Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav on a flight back in 1996 that led him to enter politics. He joined as its general secretary and soon became Mulayam Singh Yadav’s crisis manager and the face of SP in Delhi’s power circles.

Amar Singh was expelled from the party in 2010 after being blamed by Akhilesh Yadav for the defeat of his wife Dimple from Firozabad. Singh was again expelled from the Samajwadi Party in 2017 after a rift between Akhilesh Yadav and Mulayam Singh, his father.