Amar Singh threatens to quit SP over insult by party leaders

Lucknow: Senior Samajwadi party leader and Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh Amar Singh has threatened to quit the party, alleging that he was being insulted, kept on 'mute' and sidelined following his return to the fold after six years. In a television interview in Delhi, the former national general secretary of SP said that he found it humiliating that Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav did not take his telephone calls and even kept him waiting. This is the second dissension bomb in SP only days after the rift between Akhilesh and his uncle and Public Works Department minister Shivpal Singh Yadav was bridged by party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav. "Is this the way one treats senior party leaders," Singh questioned while saying that he will talk to Mulayam Singh about the whole issue and if a solution was not found, he will submit his resignation as a Rajya Sabha MP to Chairperson Hamid Ansari. Singh also accused some people in the party of trying to humiliate him and his associate, actress-turned-politician Jaya Prada. "She is being deliberately cornered and humiliated," Singh said while claiming that she was promised a Legislative Council seat. It was also said that Jaya Prada was to be made the Chairperson of the UP Film Council, but that order has not yet been issued. "Neither Jaya Prada nor I have sought any post for ourselves, then why are we being demeaned," he asked. Singh also said,"People who were calling the shots during the Mayawati regime are still powerful as ever and senior leaders like Shivpal Singh Yadav and Balram Yadav are being humiliated." He even accused the party of making him a "back bencher" in the Rajya Sabha while people much junior, like Naresh Agarwal and Surendra Nagar, being asked to present the party views in the House. "Leaders like me, Reoti Raman Singh, Beni Prasad Verma have been asked to sit quietly," he said. Singh's dissatisfaction with the party has become public at a time when the ruling dispensation is smarting under serious differences within its leaders and is also fighting anti-incumbency ahead of the 2017 state assembly polls. Only on Monday, Mulayam Singh had held a close door meeting to "set things right" between his son Akhilesh, brother Shivpal Singh Yadav and cousin Ram Gopal Yadav. Insiders, however, said that no one was happy with the re-entry of Singh into the party fold but relented when the SP chief put his foot down. A leader also told IANS that while he was reluctantly assimilated in the party, no senior leader wanted Singh to wield power like before.