The Samajwadi Party on Tuesday declared Amar Singh, an old aide of party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, as one of its seven nominees for the membership of the Rajya Sabha.
The decision was taken during parliamentary board meeting to finalise names for Rajya Sabha and Vidhan Parishad nomination.
The SP’s central parliamentary board, at a meeting in Lucknow, said that aside from Amar Singh, the other nominees are Beni Prasad Verma, Sanjay Seth, Sukhram Yadav, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, Arvind Singh and Revti Raman Singh.
The meeting was attended by party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, national general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, senior ministers Shivpal Yadav and Mohammad Azam Khan, special invitee chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and Kiranmoy Nanda.
The Rajya Sabha and the UP Legislative Council seats will fall vacant on July 4 and July 6, respectively.
As per the existing strength of the different parties in the 403-member UP Assembly, the Samajwadi Party with 227 MLAs will get six nominees for Rajya Sabha, the Bahujan Samajwadi Party(BSP) will get two, and the BJP will get one.
Currently, the BSP has six of these seats and the SP has three.
Similarly, as per their current strength in the Assembly, the SP, the BSP and the BJP will be able to get seven, two and one seats, respectively, in the UP Legislative Council.
Before resigning from the party on January 6, 2010, Singh was the SP general secretary a Rajya Sabha MP. He was expelled from the party by Mulayam on February 2, 2010.
He was arrested and jailed for bribing three Lok Sabha MPs to support the Manmohan Singh government during a trust vote in Parliament in 2008. After his release he claimed that he had retired from politics.
