Former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh passed away on Saturday in Singapore after suffering from illness for several months, according to reports. The Rajya Sabha member had been admitted to the ICU due to his critical condition. He was 64.
Amar Singh was known for being an influential leader in Indian politics.
Amar had reportedly suffered a kidney failure in 2013 and had undergone a kidney transplant.
Born in Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh on January 27, 1956, Amar Singh was elected to the Rajya Sabha for the first time in 1996 and again in 2002 when he was the general secretary of the Samajwadi Party. He had an encounter with Mulayam Singh on a flight in 1996 and became very close to the leader. For at least two decades, Amar Singh was the party’s face in Delhi’s power corridors. Singh created headlines in 2008 when the Left parties walked out of UPA over the nuclear deal and it was Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav who stepped in with their 39 MPs to help the Congress.
In 2008, he was mired in a huge political controversy after it was alleged that he had bribed three BJP MPs to vote for the UPA in a trust vote. In 2011, Amar Singh was chargesheeted in the case.
Singh resigned from the Samajwadi Party in January 2010, and in February of the same year, he was expelled by Mulayam Singh Yadav, the party chief.
He was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2016 as an independent member, but with support from Samajwadi Party.
He was recently in the news for a tweet where he publicly sought to make amends with the Bachchan family. In the tweet, he implied that he was in the last leg of his life. “Today is my father’s death anniversary & I got a message for the same from @SrBachchan ji. At this stage of life when I am fighting a battle of life & death I regret for my over reaction against Amit ji & family. God bless them all,” Amar Singh wrote.
Actor Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Ambani and Amar Singh had shared a friendship that went back to the 1990s. But Amar’s relationship with Bachchan had soured over various reasons including his criticism of Jaya Bachchan. Amar had helped turn around the fortunes of Amitabh Bachchan’s entertainment company Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL), which found itself in a Rs 90 crore debt. While cracks had been forming in his relationship with the Bachchans, Amar Singh reportedly did not forgive the Bachchans for not visiting him when he was in jail in 2011 for his involvement in the cash for votes scam.
Amar Singh's Twitter account was active just two hours ago. In his last tweet, he paid a tribute to Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
Tribute to the great revolutionary freedom fighter Lokmanya #BalGangadharTilak ji on his death anniversary.
— Amar Singh (@AmarSinghTweets) August 1, 2020
His contribution will be remembered forever pic.twitter.com/tEdchlp1hz
He is survived by his wife Pankaja and his twin daughters.