From Vegetable Man to Crorepati: Kripashankar Singh


He then worked with Surya Prasad Mishra, a local Congress corporator from Kherwadi as a karyakarta 'functionary' in 1978, says an IndiaToday report.  Kripashankar used to accompany the corporator and within a few months, for reasons unknown, the latter asked him not to visit him again.

He was then seen with another Congress corporator Khan Bastiwala who denounced him after a while. "I did not like his conduct and asked him to stop coming to my office. He was spoiling my name and that of the Congress by his dealings, I did not like it," Bastiwala was quoted in IndiaToday.

After being rejected by both corporators, Singh turned to then Congress MLA Chandrakant Tripathi and also made friends with Congressman-turned-MHADA board chairman Janardhan Chandurkar in 1986; however, both of them decided to be disassociated with him after a while.

It was in 1988 that Kripashankar had his breaking point when he got himself associated with Pratibha Patil, now President of India. The IndiaToday article by Krishna Kumar revealed that according to a few congress sources, he helped Pratibha Patil to come clean in a certain issue and in return, she appointed him the organizing secretary when she became the president of Congress party in Maharashtra. He grew himself in the party to be made minister of state for home in 1999.

His term at the ruling government was the time his wealth grow quite dramatically and it was reported that Kripashankar doled out nearly 349 arms licences during his term of which 102 of them where allowed to a security agency owned by his friend R. N. Singh.

However, Kripashankar Singh, the MLA from Santa Cruz area of Mumbai, denies all the allegations and said, “I do not own those many properties as are being shown.”  "Let the law takes its own course. I will abide by the law and fight my legal battle in court," he said.