New Delhi: Sanjay Sinh, who is commonly referred to as the ‘Raja of Amethi’ in Uttar Pradesh, resigned as the Congress Rajya Sabha MP as well as from the party Tuesday. He will join the Bharatiya Janata Party Wednesday.
The announcement came on a day when the BJP government introduced the controversial Triple Talaq Bill for voting in the Rajya Sabha.
Sinh, a descendant of the erstwhile royal family in Amethi, has been in the BJP earlier too.
According to a senior Congress leader, who did not wish to be named, Sinh has considerable influence in the Amethi region. He was a close friend of former PM Rajiv Gandhi and had helped the Congress win the Amethi seat in the 1980s.
He, however, left the Congress in 1988 and joined the Janata Dal led by V.P. Singh, Sinh’s first wife Garima Singh’s uncle. When V.P. Singh became prime minister, he made Sinh the union communications minister.
Sinh then ditched the Janata Dal for the BJP. In 1998, he had even won from the Amethi Lok Sabha seat on a BJP ticket. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, Sinh was pitted against former Congress president Sonia Gandhi from Amethi and he lost.
In 2003, he was back in the Congress and won the Sultanpur Lok Sabha seat in 2009. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha in April 2014 from Assam.
The Congress fielded Sinh from Sultanpur in this year’s Lok Sabha election too, but he lost to former women and child development minister and senior BJP leader Maneka Gandhi.
According to sources, Sinh was preparing to quit the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, but changed his mind after the party nominated him to the Rajya Sabha from Assam.
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Controversial past
In the late 1980s, Sinh was accused of murdering Syed Modi, a renowned badminton player. Modi was shot dead in Lucknow. After the CBI took over the case, Sinh’s house was raided.
Seven persons, including Sinh and Modi’s wife Ameeta, who later married, were charged with the conspiracy to commit murder. While Sinh and Ameeta were absolved of the charges in 1990, the only person who was convicted in the case was the shooter, Bhagwati Singh, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009. Two of the accused — Amar Bahadur and Balai Singh — died before the judgment was delivered.
Five years later, Sinh married Ameeta, but his marriage was challenged by his first wife Garima Sinh, who claimed that their divorce had not materialised. At present, Sinh is caught in an inheritance dispute with Garima.
In July 2014, Garima, along with her three children, returned to Bhupati Bhawan, the ancestral palace of the Amethi royal family, and occupied two rooms.
The family claimed its rights over Sinh’s property, maintaining that he and Garima were not divorced as the high court and the Supreme Court had set aside the divorce decree in 1998. The mutual divorce had been “fraudulently” decreed in 1995 after which Sinh married Ameeta.
In 2017, the BJP fielded Garima against Ameeta (Congress) from the Amethi assembly seat. Garima won while Ameeta came fourth. Incidentally, Sinh was the chairman of the Congress campaign committee in UP.
Ameeta has also quit the Congress along with Sinh.
‘My decision of leaving won’t impact Congress’
Sinh, who was considered close to the Gandhi family, said he decided to part ways with the Congress after seeing the current situation of the party.
“I have been with the Congress since 1984. My decision of leaving (the party) won’t impact Congress in any way,” Singh told reporters Tuesday.
“Whatever has happened in Congress in 15 years, hasn’t happened before. I took this decision after thinking a lot about it,” he added.
Talking to ThePrint, Sinh said he supports the Triple Talaq Bill and was impressed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s style of functioning.
“The Congress is headless and doesn’t know where it is going. I decided to join the BJP, but have not set any condition or asked for any post,” he told ThePrint.
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