Guwahati: Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief and former Union minister Chaudhary Ajit Singh died on Thursday. He was 82.
The RLD chief, a prominent leader in western Uttar Pradesh, was admitted to a private hospital in Gurugram after his condition deteriorated due to a lung infection on Tuesday. Ajit Singh had tested positive for the novel coronavirus on April 20.
Ajit Singh’s condition worsened and he passed away on Thursday, his son and former MP Jayant Chaudhary wrote on Twitter. “Chaudhary Ajit Singh ji was diagnosed as Covid positive on April 20. He battled his condition till the very end and breathed his last today morning,” Jayant Chaudhary said.
चौधरी साहब नहीं रहे!
🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/7cnLkf0c6K— Jayant Chaudhary (@jayantrld) May 6, 2021
Ajit Singh (1939-2021)
The son of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, Chaudhary Ajit Singh was a seven-time MP from Baghpat. He also served as the Union Minister of Civil Aviation.
Son of a formidable farmer leader Charan Singh, who helmed the country for six months in 1979-1980, Ajit Singh worked 15 years in the computer industry in the United States before he returned to the country to inherit the political fief of his father in the prosperous western Uttar Pradesh.
An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Ajit Singh was first elected to Rajya Sabha in 1986.
The seven-time member of Lok Sabha, Ajit Singh, represented the family’s pocket borough of Baghpat in the Lower House of Parliament. His party RLD wields influence in Jat-dominated western Uttar Pradesh.
Political career of Ajit Singh
Ajit Singh forayed from Lok Dal to Congress and allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Samajwadi Party.
Perceived as a fair-weather friend or an opportunist by his critics, Ajit Singh switched alliances in an effort to remain on the winning side.
Ajit Singh was inducted as the Union minister of industry in the VP Singh government. He joined the PV Narasimha Rao government as food minister but resigned from the Congress in 1996.
Ajit Singh formed RLD and joined the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government as agriculture minister in 2001. He was part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government till May 2003.
Ajit Singh joined the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) later after forging an alliance with the Congress for assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
