A political leader who effortlessly changed hats he wore for Bharat and India, died today. Ajit Singh, 82, variously known as leader of farmers, Jats and representative of the area loosely known as western Uttar Pradesh, several-term union minister and a trained engineer from IIT who worked at IBM for a brief period, had been politically inactive in recent years. But he inherited a strong political legacy left behind by his father, former prime minister Charan Singh, that he has bequeathed to his son, Jayant Choudhary, former MP from Mathura. Ajit Singh cut his teeth on non-Congress politics, though he did steer his party into an alliance with the second Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government till 2014. His primary constituency was farmers of western UP, both Hindu and Muslim. This region, that sends one of the largest contingents of MPs from UP to the Lok Sabha, made him an essential part of many of the coalition governments in the 1990s and 2000s. Through his political career, his endeavour remained to ensure the rights and claims of the farmer constituency was protected: and this led to his guidance, remotely, of the farmers’ movement, against three union laws. His son Jayant was one of the few politicians to be invited to the podium to address the agitating farmers – who maintain that the decision to vote against ‘Choudhary Ajit Singh’s party’ in 2019 was a mistake.