SANJAY SINGH

He was elected to the Rajya Sabha on 8 January 2018 from the state of Delhi. He was in-charge of the party's affairs in the state of Punjab during the 2017 elections and a core member of the Delhi Election Campaign Group (DECG) which was formed during the Delhi assembly elections. Singh comes from a humble background, a proof of which was noticed when he had no income, assets or property when he filed for the nominations of the Rajya Sabha.

Early Life and Education

Sanjay Singh was born in Sultanpur District, Uttar Pradesh. Born to parents, who were teachers, Singh has a diploma in Mining Engineering from Orissa School of Mining Engineering in Keonjhar. He was at the forefront to speak for the right of miners along with being associated to the rights of street hawkers. He has worked towards the welfare of the people of Sultanpur and raised their issues on different platforms from the beginning.

Career in Social Work

He formed the Azad Samaj Seva Samiti in Lucknow in 1994. He started working for and among the poor — organizing blood donation camps, health camps and campaigning for people's rights and worked towards providing employment opportunities to the poor. Singh has time and again been associated with movements related to hawkers and managed to raise their issues at different platforms. He is a part of the National Hawkers' Federation as well.

Prior to joining politics, Sanjay Singh led and was associated with many social movements and causes for people's welfare. He has been a fellow companion of renowned socialist leader Shri Raghu Thakur of Democratic Socialist Party, and participated in various welfare and socialist conferences and movements along with him. Singh was involved in a 16-year struggle for the rights of the street vendors in Uttar Pradesh and proffered his services for disaster relief operations in Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and Nepal. He later carried on the legacy of Anna Hazare's 2011 Anti-Corruption movement countrywide.

Political career in India

Singh was among those who were involved in the Aam Aadmi Party since its inception in 2012. Singh was in charge of the Punjab state unit of the party as it contested the Punjab Assembly election in February 2017. The party became the largest opposition party in Punjab under his leadership and has the Leader of Opposition in its debut electoral contest. He accused Punjab revenue minister Bikram Singh Majithia of being complicit with the drug trade and not doing enough to control the menace in Punjab. In turn, Majithia filed a defamation suit against him, Arvind Kejriwal and Ashish Khetan He was spearheading the AAP’s civic polls campaign in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. He was also the Delhi state-in-charge for the elections.

In January 2018, he took an oath as a Rajya Sabha MP from Delhi. Through his "Motion of Thanks" speech, he has spoken about protecting India's democracy and challenged the central government's policies.

Singh has remained active in the Parliament since 2018 and is known for his bold statements against issues in the country. He is a member of the Standing Committee and Consultative Committee on Urban Development, a member of the Silk Board of India and a member of the Parliamentary Friendship Group on Latin American Countries (LAC). He is a former member of the Standing Committee on Coal and Steel. He has participated in several important debates including the Rafale deal for which a 5000 crore defamation suit was filed against him by Anil Ambani group Reliance Defence. Singh also raised discrepancies involving the operational One Stop Centres in the country and the respective fund allocations across the states. Singh has raised concerns related to child deaths due to malnutrition, prevention of child trafficking, stringent punishments for sexual abuse of children amongst others and was felicitated with the PGC Award by UNICEF India in 2020 for his efforts.

Singh has also raised questions related to the economic slowdown of the economy, concerns related to non-performing assets in the nation and the increasing loan defaulters in the public and private financial sectors. He has also put forward arguments related to finances spent on various government schemes like Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Prime Minister Awas Yojana (Urban and Rural), Smart Cities Mission and Minimum Support Price (MSP) for farmers. In March 2020, Singh raised in the Rajya Sabha, the issue of a company in Israel using a picture of Mahatma Gandhi on wine bottle. He urged the government to take the matter into account.

Singh's parliamentary statistics show his exemplary record in the parliament. He was raised 228 starred and unstarred questions in the parliament and introduced 3 Private Member Bills. He has further participated in 142 debates in his tenure of over two years.

In his term as an MP, Singh has provided various works to be carried out in his constituency from his MPLADs fund. In 2018 he donated one crore rupees from MPLAD along with one month of salary towards the Kerala Flood Relief. Some other development activities undertaken by him include provision of an ambulance in the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital in Delhi, placing street lights and dustbins across Delhi.