Birender Singh - a towering Jat leader in Haryana (Profile)

Birender Singh, who was Sunday sworn-in as a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers, switched to the BJP ahead of the Haryana assembly election after spending four decades in the Congress.

Jat community leader Birender Singh, 68, had all the credentials - political standing, mass base, political lineage and experience, as per his own claim, to be chief minister of Haryana.

When he failed to get his due in the Congress party, with whom he remained associated for over four decades, he switched loyalties to the BJP just before the Haryana assembly elections.

He quit the Congress and his Rajya Sabha seat recently.

Grandson of well-known farmers' rights leader, Sir Chhotu Ram, Birender Singh is a towering Jat leader in Haryana. Though related to former chief minister and Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Singh remained a bitter critic of Hooda in the last few years.

That is perhaps the reason why his name was scuttled at the last moment when he was about to be included in the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre in June 2013.

A former general secretary of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC), Singh also remained member of the powerful Congress Working Committee (CWC) from where he was expelled in August this year as he was getting close to the BJP.