Chaudhary Ajit Singh, 82, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief and a powerful Jat satrap of western Uttar Pradesh, who held key portfolios in several Governments at the Centre and switched sides effortlessly died of Covid on Thursday.
Singh could not be a witness to the recent revival of his party in the Uttar Pradesh Panchayat polls after it was virtually washed out in last Assembly elections.
The twin Jat-Muslim support in the rural hinterland of Western UP remained late leader’s political lifeline that failed him in the twilight of his long career as the BJP made its foot-prints in the region.
Singh, son of Ch Charan Singh, the first Prime Minister from the Jatland, was apparently a reluctant politician before he took the plunge and established himself as an astute politician, who like late Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, was seldom “jobless”.
Singh was born on February 12, 1939, at Bhadoola, in Meerut, UP, to former Prime Minister Ch Charan Singh and Gayatri Devi. He is survived by his wife Radhika Singh and son Jayant Chaudhary.
Singh was an alumnus of Lucknow University, IIT Kharagpur, and Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. He worked for 15 years in the IT industry in the US before returning to India.
The Jat leader was caught in an unsavoury controversy when in 2014 water and electricity connections of his Thuqlag road residence were snapped as he failed to vacate it despite being served the eviction notice.
Despite witnessing a dive in his political career in the last few years, he nevertheless enjoyed power as good as one can. Singh had inherited the political legacy of his father in ‘Lok Dal’ and became a Rajya Sabha member in 1986, a year after the former’s death.
A seven-time Member of Parliament from Baghpat, Singh served as Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Agriculture, and Food Processing Industries in different Governments.
The Government changed hands but the RLD leader retained his political clout and managed key cabinet slots in the series of coalition Governments at the Centre.
Singh was “always” a Minister and served in the a number of Governments, including those of VP Singh, PV Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.
In 2011, Singh came on board in United Progressive Alliance to serve as the Union Minister of Civil Aviation from December 2011 to May 2014.
In his chequered career, his political stand went through several somersaults from heading the Lok Dal (A) and the Janata Party in 1987 and 1988, before being general secretary of the Janata Dal in 1989 with V.P. Singh and thereafter founding the RLD in 1998.
Singh won most of Lok Sabha election he contested from Baghpat in western UP, which was his father’s constituency, except the ones which he lost to Som Nath Shastri in 1998 and Satyapal Singh of BJP with a big margin.
In the fag end of his career he lost from Muzaffarnagar Lok Sabha seat as his son Jayant too was defeated from Bagpat.
His party, however, showed sign of a robust political revival after it fully backed farmers protests against new farm laws passed by the Modi-Government. RLD joined hands with Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU), one of the prominent farmers union spearheading the agitation on the Delhi borders.
“It is a matter of life and death for farmers, but do not worry. All have to stay together, united in this -- this is Chaudhary saahab’s (Ajit Singh’s) message,” said Jayant , the RLD vice president.
RLD seemed to have benefited by their political moves as is reflected in their success in the recently held 747 Zila Panchayat wards.
The party has made commendable come back in Meerut, Mathura, Muzaffarnagar and in the rest of Western UP winning at least eight seats in Mathura and Meerut.
It would be for the RLD’s vice-president and Singh’s son Jayant to build on RLD’s success as combined opposition led by SP-BSP are looking good and resurrecting vis-a-vis the BJP in UP.
