Things had started going wrong for Amar soon after the Lok Sabha elections. Senior party leaders had blamed him for the party’s poor show.
Amar Singh’s resignation from all Samajwadi Party posts has been met with scepticism. Adversaries and friends alike are unsure whether he is just posturing or whether the decision has been prompted by serious health concerns.
The 53-year-old Singh’s colleagues in the SP as well as his erstwhile friends like Beni Prasad Verma, Raj Babbar and Azam Khan have dismissed his latest move as nothing but yet another attempt to pressurise Mulayam Singh Yadav. “He is a past master at all this. He knows he has struck Mulayam where it hurts, and he is doing all this to pressurise him once again,” said Verma.
Others shared his scepticism. “Don’t be too surprised if Mulayam dispatches a family member to nurse Amar’s bruised ego,” said former associate Khan.
It’s no secret that Singh has rubbed almost all the senior SP leaders the wrong way and is certainly not the most popular person in the party. In the past, whenever a leader chose to take on Amar, Mulayam invariably sided with his party general secretary.
This forced the likes of Khan, Babbar and Verma to leave the party. But this time, the scale seems to be slightly less tilted towards Amar Singh. Ranged against him are some of Mulayam’s closest people — son Akhilesh Yadav and brother Ram Gopal Yadav.
Things had started going wrong for Amar soon after the Lok Sabha elections. Senior party leaders had blamed him for the party’s poor show.
This is not the first time Amar has quit. By his own admission, he has resigned thrice in the past. But on each occasion, the SP chief managed to paper over the differences. SP insiders talk of the enormous influence and the changes that the controversial leader has brought to the party.
Though Amar says he is not indispensable, SP insiders do talk of his contribution to the party. Over the years, Amar has not only become the face of the SP at the Centre but has also managed to play a larger than life role in party affairs. He became a part of Mulayam’s core team. Before him, the SP was largely a rustic party, forever short of funds and confined largely to the dust bowl of UP.
Amar changed all that. He was instrumental in giving the party a larger profile. His networking skills drew the rich and the beautiful like Anil Ambani, Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan, Jaya Prada, and Sanjay Dutt into the SP fold. He also ensured that the party was never short of either funds or glamour.
“There is no doubt that he is highly controversial and under his influence the party has taken some disastrous decisions. But his help has been crucial for Mulayam,” said a SP Lok Sabha MP.
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