Amar Singh quits party posts

Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh on Wednesday resigned from all the posts he held in the party but retained his primary membership. Citing health reasons, he quit as party general secretary, as national spokesman and from the party’s Parliamentary Board.

True to his style, Mr. Amar Singh conveyed his decision from Dubai, where he is on a vacation, to a news agency and later to a private television channel. He faxed his resignation letter to party chief Mulayam Singh, who was in Lucknow in the morning.

Mr. Amar Singh, a member of the Rajya Sabha, denied he was quitting the posts because of differences with Mr. Mulayam Singh but sounded bitter that it was not the party but his family and friends (the Bachchans and Anil Ambanis) who stood by him when he underwent kidney transplant in Singapore last year.

Mr. Amar Singh, who attacked Mr. Mulayam Singh for the party’s humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha by-election in Firozabad last November, however, maintained that he was grateful to the party chief for the opportunities he gave him and would never speak a word against him. “I am grateful to him for the opportunities he gave me. But after my kidney transplant my priority is my health, my daughters and my wife. At the age of 53, I am entitled to Earned Leave.”