Ajit Singh, politician

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A brief biography

Subodh Ghildiyal , May 7, 2021: The Times of India

The best and the worst about Ajit Singh, veteran politician and scion of late Charan Singh, was that he was happy in his skin. He did not crave, or value, approval or validation. It was a quality that made him his own man, a politician who managed to keep his hold over the ‘Jatland’ of UP even as he was labelled a “political chameleon”.

At one time a constant in national and UP politics, Singh was a bundle of contradictions — an IIT computer engineer of the 1960s who plunged into the rough and tumble of politics, a suave Jat who presided over a rugged region and its aggressive and empowered populace, a gentleman who just could not resist being “practical”.

Ajit Singh’s long career is also a story of a legacy lost

Ajit Singh practically retired from politics after losing two consecutive elections in 2014 and 2019 in his erstwhile patch.

For a man who was an LS MP from 1989 to 2014 with just one defeat in the 1998 polls, and who held elite central ministries like commerce and industry, agriculture, food processing and civil aviation under PMs as ideologically diverse as V P Singh, Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, the CV is a testimony to political suppleness as well as a grassroots legacy.

But the long career is also largely a story of a legacy lost. A supporter in Baghpat once described him as “the man who shrank his mighty father Charan Singh’s legacy from six states to six districts”. Fissures in his loyal base had begun to surface over time, with fast changing age profile, aspirations and national political churn.

The advent of Narendra Modi, his hard Hindutva and native appeal cleaved Singh’s longstanding Jat-Muslim combine, planting BJP in the region and sweeping aside Rashtriya Lok Dal. The post-2014 barren phase put to complete shade the farmer-OBC politics that struck roots six decades ago. Now, Singh’s son Jayant, who has been leading the protests against the controversial farm laws over the last few months, faces a daunting challenge of reviving that faded appeal in an altered context.