While railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal's nephew Vijay Singla might be just another nail in the UPA's coffin, his rise to prominence and prosperity is a mildly fascinating tale in itself.

While railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal's nephew Vijay Singla might be just another nail in the UPA's coffin, his rise to prominence and prosperity is a mildly fascinating tale in itself.

Singla, now in his 40s, used to stay in a rented apartment in Panchkula, Punjab till about a decade back. In ten years, his fortunes escalated to such heights that he now owns a palatial house, several showrooms, a mall, schools and hundreds of acres of land.

According to an Indian Express report, Singla is the son of Pawan Kumar Bansal's youngest of seven sisters, who died recently.

Singla, who is not seen in public often, was known to have a lot of sway over Bansal's constituency Chandigarh. It was a known fact that the Bansal siblings are all very close and even helped during election procedures. Singla, recently, had been handling Bansal's campaigns and even arranged funds for the same.

Indian Express quotes:

Senior BJP leader Satya Pal Jain, who is also the national head of the party's legal and legislative cell, claimed that while Bansal was distancing himself from his nephew now, it was Singla who had arranged election meetings for him with different segments of voters including industrialists.

Business Standard reports that Singla's business interests include everything from manufacturing, retail, real estate and education. His family owns a manufacturing unit Jagan Tubes and has a mall called Acropolis coming up in a Rs 1,000-crore industrial plot in Chandigarh.

Business Standard reports: