Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh dies at 64

Lucknow, Aug 01: Former Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Amar Singh passed away on Saturday. He was 64.

Singh had been admitted to the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore for the last seven months.

The Rajya Sabha MP, who was under treatment there, had earlier undergone a kidney transplant. He had suffered kidney failure in 2013.

Amar who not too long ago was one of the more powerful politicians in the country, was once known to be very close to the party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav. Singh along with his close associate Jaya Prada were expelled from the Samajwadi Party in February, 2010.

On 21 December 2010, Singh launched his official website and blog, supposedly after being encouraged by Hindi film actor Amitabh Bachchan, whom he was close to at the time.

Singh floated his own political party, Rashtriya Lok Manch, in 2011, and fielded candidates in 360 of the 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2012 assembly polls.

However his party did not win a single seat in these election. He joined the Rashtriya Lok Dal party in March 2014, contested the general elections that year from Fatehpur Sikri, Uttar Pradesh in 2014 Indian general election and lost.