Amar Singh was first elected to Rajya Sabha in 1996.
New Delhi:
The Election Commission will hold bye-election on September 11 for the Rajya Sabha seat vacated by the death of former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh
Amar Singh died on August 2 at a Singapore hospital. He was 64.
In a notification, the Election Commission today said that it has “decided to hold bye-election to the Council of States from Uttar Pradesh” to fill up the seat. The last date to file nominations is September 1. Whoever elected will have a term of less than two years as Amar Singh’s tenure ended on April 4, 2022, according to the notification.
All government-mandated measures have to be followed while making arrangements for conducting the polls, the election body said.
“The Chief Secretary, Uttar Pradesh is being directed to depute a senior officer from the state to ensure that the extant instructions regarding COVID-19 containment measures are complied with while making arrangements for conducting the election,” read the notification.
The polling will be conducted between 9 AM and 4 PM and counting of votes will begin an hour after the polling ends.
Amar Singh was first elected to Rajya Sabha in 1996. After he was expelled by the Samajwadi Party in 2010, he was elected to Rajya Sabha again in 2016 as an independent member but with support from the Samajwadi Party, with whom he was seen to have burnt his bridges.
He had gone to a hospital in Singapore in March for surgery in a kidney-related illness. He is survived by his wife Pankaja Singh and two daughters – Drishti and Disha.
Amar Singh was a key leader in the Samajwadi Party at a time when the party moved to support the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2008, after the Communist Party of India withdrew from the government over a nuclear deal with the US.
