His primary competitor was Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Indian National Congress party who was a former chief minister of the state. Singh was elected to the Lok Sabha after defeating Azad by a margin of 60,976 votes. Singh was polled 4,87,369 votes while Azad was polled 4,26,393 votes. On 27 May 2014, Singh was appointed Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office, Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Minister of State for Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Space. He also became the Union Minister of State (Independent charge) in the Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Earth Sciences. In March 2019, the party renominated Singh as its candidate from the Udhampur constituency for the upcoming general election. His main rival was Vikramaditya Singh of the Congress party and supported by Jammu and Kashmir National Conference party. He is also the grandson of Hari Singh, the last monarch of the former princely state. Jitendra Singh fought the election on his "development report card". Notable campaigners for him included Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Ram Madhav and cricketer Gautam Gambhir. Jitendra Singh was re-elected to the Lok Sabha after defeating Vikramaditya Singh by approximately 350,000 votes. Jitendra Singh was polled 7,15,406 votes compared to his rival's 3,66,123 votes. On 31 May 2019, it was announced that Singh had retained his ministries in the Second Modi ministry. As a minister of science and technology, Singh launched India's first indigenously made research vessel named "Sindhu Sadhana" on 14 July 2014 from Mormugao harbour in Goa. In a written response to the Lok Sabha on 31 July, he announced that India had signed cooperative arrangements with 33 countries for "peaceful use of outer space". He further added that areas of co-operation included remote sensing of earth, launch services, satellite communication, telemetry, space exploration and space law. He further launched India's first home-made broad spectrum confocal microscope on 7 October at New Delhi. He announced that the government was considering increasing the retirement age of scientists to 62 years. The ministry increased the stipend of researchers by 50% at the end of the month. On 8 November 2014, Singh was replaced by Harsh Vardhan, another doctor as the minister of science and technology and earth sciences.