Sanjay Singh, former Gandhi loyalist to contest in Amethi on BJP ticket

Once a Congress loyalist and commonly referred to as the "Raja of Amethi" in Uttar Pradesh, Dr Sanjay Singh has been fielded by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as its candidate from the Amethi region ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. 

In its fresh list issued on Sunday, the BJP has named 45 new candidates for the upcoming Assembly polls fielding Sanjay Singh from Amethi, a seat which was earlier held by his first wife, Garima Singh. Singh who hails from an erstwhile royal family in Amethi had joined the BJP in 2019 after exiting from Congress on grounds of a "lack of leadership" in the party. 

Meanwhile, this can come as a major setback for Congress as the former party leader continues to have a good influence in the region ever since he was working with Congress. 

Notably, the Gandhi family loyalist and the party's formal Amethi strongman Sanjay Singh along with his wife Amita Singh had ventured into BJP in July 2019 citing that there is a lack of leadership in the party as the Congress is unaware of the future. Further stating his reasons for resignation, he said, "I have been with the Gandhi family since 1984, and there would be no differences in our family relations. Congress is such an old party, I have been in the Youth Congress, and also as a Minister in Uttar Pradesh. I was thinking about resignation after observing things. For forty years, it was better in communication but it has deteriorated in the past 15-20 years."

Sanjay Singh's shift jump from Congress to BJP

Once a close friend of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Sanjay Singh had played a key role behind Congress in winning the Amethi seat in the 1980s. However, he later left the party in 1988 and joined the Janata Dal, and became the Union Communication Minister after VP Singh became the PM.

Later he left Janata Dal and joined BJP and in 1998 won the elections from the Amethi Lok Sabha seat on the party's ticket. However, after losing to Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Amethi in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, he came back to Congress in 2003 and won the Sultanpur Lok Sabha seat in the 2009 elections when was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2014 from Assam. 

Finally, the former Congress Rajya Sabha MP resigned from the party in 2019 and joined BJP in presence of the working president, JP Nadda. 

BJP issues 9th list of candidates

The Bharatiya Janata Party in its 9th list of candidates released late Sunday evening has issued 45 names for the seats to be going into polls in the 5th, 6th, and 7th phase of the UP elections. Among the names of the candidates included Sanjay Singh from Amethi, Dayashankar Singh from Ballia Nagar constituency, UP Minister Anand Swaroop Shukla from Bairia, Ravindra Jaiswal from Varanasi North, Anil Rajbhar from Shivpur, Neelkanth Tiwari from Varanasi South, and Sangeeta Bind from Ghazipur. 

Meanwhile, former Union Minister and BJP-turned-Congress leader RPN Singh failed to make the cut with the party. 

Image: Republic World