New Delhi:
The Union Cabinet will be expanded on Sunday morning with the swearing-in of its newest member Ajit Singh as the Civil Aviation Minister.
The alliance came about with an eye on the crucial Uttar Pradesh elections due in a few months. Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Ajit Singh is a local political satrap with a significant base the western part of the state.
With the RLD's five MPs in the Lok Sabha, the ruling UPA coalition's strength in the House has gone up from the borderline 272 to 277 MPs.
The RLD is now expected to contest 45 of the 403 seats in the 2012 polls for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in alliance with the Congress. Most of these seats are in the party's traditional stronghold - the agricultural belt of western Uttar Pradesh.
The alliance is being seen as significant given the sustained bid by the Congress, particularly its general secretary and youth leader Rahul Gandhi, to retrieve lost ground in the state where assembly elections due early next year.
This will be the fourth time that Mr Singh will be sworn in as a member of the Union Cabinet.
The 72-year-old Mr Singh has had one earlier association with the Congress at the Centre, as the Union Food Minister in 1995-96 when P V Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister.
He was part of the United Front government headed by VP Singh and was the Union Industries Minister in 1991-1992. He was the Union Agriculture Minister between 2001 and 2004 after he joined the National Democratic Alliance government headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee.