Singh remained a minister of state for external affairs until the Congress party lost power after being defeated in the general elections of 1989. In those elections, he contested and lost the Mathura seat in Uttar Pradesh. The Congress party returned to power after the elections of 1991, with P.V. Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister since Rajiv Gandhi has lately been assassinated. At this time, Singh was not an MP and could not be a minister. His importance lay solely in perceived proximity to the Sonia Gandhi, of which he was a staunch and avowed loyalist. He duly developed differences with the Prime Minister and left the party along with N.D. Tiwari and Arjun Singh, to form a new political party, All India Indira Congress. In 1998, after P.V. Narasimha Rao had been shunted into oblivion and Sonia Gandhi had regained complete control of the party, the three family loyalists merged their new party into the Congress party and returned into the service of the Gandhis.