Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh has put to rest speculations of his joining back the Samajwadi Party again. Singh said that he has nothing to do with SP now and his life is now devoted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Clad in saffron kurta, Amar Singh hogged media headlines at the Ground Breaking Ceremony on Sunday in Lucknow when Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to him in his 30-minute speech. While taking a jibe at the Congress over crony capitalism, PM said that ‘Amar Singh is sitting here and he has their history of playing with top industrialists behind curtains’.
After his speech, PM Modi met Amar Singh also and had a brief chat with him. The PM’s mention of his name and then a brief chat suddenly catapulted former Samajwadi Party General Secretary into limelight in the saffron camp. Later, his meeting with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath at his 5 Kalidas Marg residence has given air to rumours of Amar Singh making attempts to adorn ‘bhagwa’ (saffron).
Significanty, it was for the first time media and political leaders had seen Amar Singh in his new ‘avatar’ adorning a saffron kurta to suit the occasion.
In fact, after his second expulsion from the Samajwadi Party in January 2017, Amar Singh tried to come close to the Congress but 10, Janpath shut the doors on him. Since then he has been publicly lauding the PM and his government’s policies and development plans.
Once a trusted lieutenant of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Amar Singh had stated last November that he will join the BJP if invited. He even went to the extent of saying that he would campaign for Modi in 2019 Lok Sabha polls on his own. An unattached lawmaker, Amar Singh has been vocal in his criticism to SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav calling him his enemy.
A few BJP leaders were surprised over his presence during the Ground Breaking Ceremony. Close to country’s top industrialists, a senior BJP state leader confided that the party leadership was using Amar Singh’s services to bring investors in the state and explore ways how to keep the SP and BSP separated from forging an alliance in UP.
When media mobbed him, Amar Singh clarified that he has nothing to do with the Samajwadi Party now. “My entire life is now devoted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I am not going anywhere,” Amar Singh said candidly.
