Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a star in the horizon of Indian politics. He earned wide acceptability and respect in India due to his personality and deeds. He performed a crucial role in establishing BJP as a political party of mass appeal. It was due to his wide personal appeal, that during the times when BJP was considered an untouchable outfit, several political parties became its allies.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee died on 16th August 2017 at the age of 93 years. He died at 5.05 PM after a prolonged illness at AIIMS Delhi. His condition was critical for the last 36 hours before death. One of his kidneys has stopped functioning.
The Indian Government has declared 7 days national mourn on the death of former PM. During the period the national flags will remain in bending position and no official functions would be organized.
Birth
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born on 25th December 1924 at Gwalior. His father Krishan Bihari Vajpayee was a teacher.
Education
Atal Bihari completed his graduation at Gwalior at the then Victoria College which has now been renamed as Maharani Luxami Bai College. He was elected the secretary of College Student Association. Thereafter he joined Law at DAV College Kanpur. He then became a journalist at Lucknow.
Political Career
1942- Took part in the Quit India Movement and remained in jail for 24 days.
1951- Became the founder member of Bharatiya Jan Sangh, a political party formed with the help of RSS. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was the founder President of Jan Sangh.
1955- He contested and lost the first election to Lik Sabha in 1955, but got elected from Balrampur (UP) in 1957 as a Jansangh candidate.
1957- He became the member of Lok Sabha (Lower House) from Balrampur.
1962- Got elected to Rajya Sabha (Upper House) for the first time.
1968- He became the national President of Jan Sangh and the leader of its Parliamentary Board and held the post till 1977.
1975- Arrested during Emergency.
1977 to79- He became the Foreign Minister in Morarji Desai Government from 1977-79. Thereafter he became dissatisfied with the Government and left the Janta Party and formed Bharatiya Janta Party.
1980- He founded the BJP and became its President in 1980. He became instrumental as one of the other reasons which culminated in the collapse of Janta Party Government led by Morarji Desai on the issue of dual membership of Jan Sangh in RSS.
1984- After the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the BJP got reduced to just 2 MP’s in Lok Sabha under his leadership.
1986- Became member of Rajya Sabha from Gujarat.
1996- Became Prime Minister for the first time for 13 days and became instrumental to bring BJP to power in 1996 for the first time after its formation in 1980.
1998- Became Prime Minister for the second time after mid-term elections for 13 months.
1999- Resigned from the post of PM after losing no-confidence motion by 1 vote.
1999- After the Kargil war he again became PM for the third time and led the NDA government for next 5 years. NDA was the National Democratic Alliance of 24 regional and national parties having a Jumbo Cabinet with 81 Ministers. In this way, he became the PM of India three times. It was in his third attempt that he became the first non-Congress leader to complete his full term as a Prime Minister.
2004- Resigned from the post of PM after the result of general elections in which NDA was defeated.
2009- Hospitalized and kept on ventilation due to lungs infection. He remained on wheelchair thereafter, till his death.
2014- The Government decided to celebrate his birthday to be celebrated as Good Governance Day.
2015- He was conferred the title of Bharat Ratna by the President of India Pranav Mukherjee. The President visited his house on 27th March 2015 to bestow the title.
2019- He was struggling with several diseases like an infection in kidney pipe, chest congestion, and the infection in the urine pipe. He was hospitalized in AIIMS on 11th June. He was also suffering from dementia.
Association with Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru once introduced Vajpayee to the British PM, saying, “this is Vajpayee, the rising leader of the opposition, who often criticizes me, but I see great future prospects in him”.
Association with Rajiv Gandhi
In 1988, the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi came to know about the illness of Vajpayee. Rajiv summoned Vajpayee and said that he is going to include his name in the Indian delegation likely to visit UN. In this way, Rajiv sent the Vajpayee to the US for kidney treatment. It was the humility of Vajpayee that he remained thankful to Rajiv Gandhi for the rest of his life and was used to say that he is alive due to Rajiv Gandhi.
Member of Parliament
He was elected ten times as a member of Lok Sabha (Lower House), twice each from Balrampur and Delhi, once from Gwalior, and at last five times from Lucknow.
He contested parliament elections from Uttar Pradesh, New Delhi, and Madhya Pradesh.
He was also elected twice to Rajya Sabha (Upper House).
Personality
He was a writer, poet and best orator with a deep voice. He was a man of steadfast ideology which was certainly of Hinduism, but a liberal one. He was a person who could take strict decisions.
He was kind and congenial even towards his political opponents. This was the reason for his popularity. He was the face or as per his own version the mask of secularism in Bharatiya Janta Party, which is otherwise having the Hindu Ideology. BJP was and still is controlled by RSS.
He remained unmarried throughout his life. He was bold enough in Indian conventional society to declare that he was bachelor and unmarried but not celibate.
He remained unmarried throughout his life. He was bold enough in Indian conventional society to declare that he was bachelor and unmarried but not celibate.
Achievements
1. He declared India as a nuclear power after 5 underground nuclear tests from 11th to 13th May 1998. By these nuclear explosions, he successfully made India a global power in the world.
2. The credit goes to him for his efforts to normalize relations with Pakistan. In order to make peace in South East Asia, he initiated a bus service on 19th February 1999, from Delhi to Lahore to inculcate friendly relation with neighboring country Pakistan. But he was betrayed by Pakistan who led the army infiltration in May to July 1999 into Kargil district of Jammu & Kashmir, which resulted into a war between two countries. It was the infiltration of Pakistani soldiers disguised as Kashmiri militants into positions on the Indian side of the LOC.
During Kargil War, Nawaz Sheriff the PM of Pakistan visited the US and told President Bill Clinton, that he fears that the Pak Army may use a nuclear bomb in the ensuing war. Clinton spoke to Bajpayee about it. The reply of Vajpayee left Clinton and Nawaz aghast, wonderstruck and dumb. Vajpayee said that let Pakistan use a nuclear bomb, which may cause some harm to India, but Pakistan will not see the light of another day.
3. To end terrorism and to solve the Kashmir problem he gave a slogan of humanity, governance, and Kashmir- ism.
4. He became instrumental to get international recognition to Hindi in UNO, by delivering his speech in Hindi as a Foreign Minister.
5. He initiated PMGSY, a scheme to connect Indian villages to roads.
Controversies
1. It was during the Kargil War that the Indian Army had surrounded more than 3000 infiltrators, but Vajpayee gave them safe passage despite heavy losses to India. According to common Indians, they did not deserve such mercy and these elements resurfaced again to create terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir.
2. A coffin scandal surfaced in his tenure during Kargil War. The dead bodies of the soldiers were brought to their homes in the coffins, the price of which was unconvincingly more than RS. 10, 00,000 (Ten Lakh). These coffins were to keep the dead body in the frozen state until cremation.
3. Some of the families of soldiers martyred in the Kargil War say that the government only remembers them on Kargil day and they have received no compensation, while money was wasted on coffins.
4. He failed to convince Advani and his other party colleagues not to undertake Rathyatra which culminated in the demolition of Babri Masjid. He rather became a party to it and even provoked Kar Sewaks. (Youtube speech of Vajpayee on December 5, 1992).
5. After the communal riots in Gujarat In 2002, Vajpayee just told the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi to observe "Raj Dharma" or “Rulers Morality”, of having no discrimination on the basis of caste, creed or religion. He did nothing serious under the pressure of RSS.
6. During Kargil War, India lost twice the number of soldiers than Pakistan.
7. The terrorists attacked Parliament during his Prime Ministership. and Vajpayee failed in Operation Paarakaram as planned by the three Army Chiefs to retaliate the Parliament attack. As a retaliatory measure just the Delhi- Lahore bus service was discontinued which remains as such till date.
8. Indian plane was hijacked during his rule. His Cabinet Minister flew to Afghanistan with money and most wanted terrorists as a ransom. It was humiliating for India.
9. During his short jail term of 24 days in Quit India movement in 1942, he became a state witness or approver due to which the people of the entire village were sent to jail. Subhramaniyam Swami, the leader of BJP had said that Vajpayee was a British informer.
