Ajit Singh Chaudhary was the Civil Aviation Minister of India on 18th December 2011, as his party RLD, with five members in the Lok Sabha, joined the UPA. He is the founder and chief of the Rashtriya Lok Dal.

Early Life of Ajit Singh Chaudhary
He was born on 12 February 1939 at village Bhadola in the Meerut District of Uttar Pradesh. He is the son of Former Prime Minister of India Choudhary Charan Singh.

Career of Ajit Singh Chaudhary
Ajit Singh Chaudhary was educated at Lucknow University, IIT Kharagpur and the Illinois Institute of Technology. He worked in the U.S. for 17 years and returned to India in the early 1980s to revive the Lok Dal party founded by his father Charan Singh.

Political Career of Ajit Singh Chaudhary
Ajit Singh Chaudhary entered into regional politics in the year 1986. He entered Parliament as a Rajya Sabha member for Uttar Pradesh in 1986, and is a seven time member of the Lok Sabha. Singh formed his own faction of the Lok Dal called Lok Dal (Ajit) in 1987. A year later he merged it with the Janata Party and became President of the merged party. He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1989 and re-elected in 1991.

In 1989-90 he became a Union minister for Industry when he was inducted into the National Front government of Vishwanath Pratap Singh. He moved to the Congress Party, then in power, with a large slice of the Janata Dal MPs In the mid-nineties. He went on to become the food minister under the Congress government (1995-96) when P. V. Narasimha Rao was the prime minister.

Ajit Singh Chaudhary won the 1996 Lok Sabha poll on a Congress ticket. He left the party within a year and formed the Bharatiya Kisan Kamgar Party. He resigned from Lok Sabha membership and contested the consequent bye-election defeating his nearest Indian National Congress candidate Mukhiya Gurjar.

He lost the 1998 election to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Som Pal. He avenged the defeat in 1999 after constituting new party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal.

In July 2001, his party made an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections and he joined the BJP-led government as the important Cabinet Minister for Agriculture. He joined an alliance between the BJP and Bahujan Samaj Party. In May 2003 Ajit withdrew from the Government of India and the Cabinet. When Mulayam Singh Yadav came to power, Singh supported him up until early 2007, after which he left the government. His party contested 2009 Lok Sabha-election under BJP led National Democratic Alliance and he was re-elected to the 15th Lok Sabha from Baghpat. From 2001 to 2003, he was Minister of Agriculture in government of Former Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Bajpayee. After his party joined the United Progressive Alliance in 2011, he was Minister of Civil Aviation from 18 December 2011 to 25 May 2014.In his work period, the Government of India allowed 49 percent of foreign investments in Civil Aviation in India.

Personal Life of Ajit Singh Chaudhary
Ajit Singh Chaudhary is married to Radhika Singh. The couple is blessed with one son and two daughters. His son, Jayant Chaudhary is currently M.P. from Mathura constituency in Uttar Pradesh. He is married and has one son and two daughters. His son Jayant Chaudhary was the member of 15th Lok Sabha.