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Defiant, he won’t quit
RS
New Delhi:
Amar Singh has refused to quit his Rajya Sabha seat. “I have earned it and not got it as alms,” said the former spokesman of the SP, while speaking to mediapersons here. Referring to party chief Mulayam Singh
Yadav, Amar Singh said: “I will not say anything to Mulayam Singh. He has blessed me. It is a blessing in disguise. He has liberated me”. He also termed as baseless reports about his cosying up to the Congress, the NCP and the
BSP. “I have had no discussion with anybody or any party,” he said. “I had only emphathised with
Mayawati. She had a bitter experience with the SP. Since I am also in a similar position now, I can understand her pain,” said
Amar. — TNS |
Lucknow, February 2
The Samajwadi party finally brought down the curtain on the ongoing drama being enacted by two of its most popular faces — Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh and Lok Sabha MP Jaya Prada — by expelling them from the primary membership of the party.
Four party MLAs have also been suspended for expressing their loyalty to Amar Singh, who had announced his resignation from all party posts on his blog on January 6. When all efforts of a rapprochement came to a naught, party president Mulayam Singh Yadav finally accepted his resignation on January 17.
The four MLAs who were suspended today for supporting Amar are Ashok Chandel, Sarvesh Singh, Sandeep Agarwal and Madan Chauhan. The state unit of the party has been asked to make an inquiry into their conduct and take further action against them. The parliamentary board meeting, chaired by president Mulayam Singh Yadav this morning, took these long-expected decisions.
Later addressing a press conference, party general secretary and spokesperson Mohan Singh declared that Amar and Jaya Prada had been expelled for indulging in anti-party activities and maligning the image of the party.
The spokesperson said Amar Singh had dented the unity of the party and the party had decided to undertake corrective surgery before the “disease spread any further.”
Regarding both the MPs continuing for the remaining tenure in Parliament, Mohan Singh said the party would take legal opinion before moving a petition before the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairman to disqualify the two leaders from the House on the grounds of indulging in anti-party activities.
Conceding that Amar’s entry into the party was a “capitalist and communal intrusion intended to damage the socialist movement,” Mohan Singh added that the party had decided to expel him with a ‘heavy heart’ in order to free the party from such forces. Amar’s move to float his Lok Manch and build it up as a parallel outfit was cited as yet another effort to what the spokesman described as Amar Singh’s attempt to “create a rift, engineer a split and dent the image of the party.”
Charging Amar of violating the party’s ideology of “jaati todo” (break the barriers of caste), Mohan Singh claimed that by openly asking Thakurs to unite behind him, the expelled leader was advocating a new casteist policy of “jaati pakdo”.
The cause for expelling the actor-turned-MP Jaya Prada was her address to the media in Delhi on Sunday in which she openly came out in favour of Amar and made “offensive comments against the party leadership”. The spokesperson described her as “a misguided missile of Amar Singh”.
“She had denounced the party’s policies which is completely unacceptable. Giving statements in support of Kalyan Singh has dented the secular image of the party. Any leader, howsoever important, cannot be allowed to make public statements against the political party to which they belong," said Mohan Singh.
Responding to a question regarding the fate of Jaya Bachchan and Abu Asim Azmi, Mohan Singh claimed that so far the two had not done anything that could be termed as an anti-party activity and hence no action was proposed against them at the moment.
