UPSC Express

Headline : Personality: Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Details :

About Atal Bihari Vajpayee

• Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian politician who thrice served as the Prime Minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, for a period of eleven months from 1998 to 1999, and then for a full term from 1999 to 2004.
• He was a member of the Indian Parliament for over four decades, having been elected to the Lok Sabha ten times, and twice to the Rajya Sabha.
• He served as the Member of Parliament for Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh until 2009 when he retired from active politics due to health concerns.
• Vajpayee was among the founding members of the erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh which he also headed from 1968 to 1972.
• He was the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Prime Minister Morarji Desai.
• When the Janata government collapsed, Vajpayee restructured the Jana Sangh into the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980.
• He was the first Indian prime minister who was not a member of the Indian National Congress party to have served a full five-year term in office.
• During his second term as prime minister, Vajpayee ordered nuclear tests in May 1998 in a strategic masterstroke to blunt Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions.
• He followed this up with peace overtures to Pakistan, riding on the first direct bus from India to Pakistan in February 1999.
• He was the first politician to speak in Hindi in U.N. assembly, thus highlighting our language at international level.
• A Padma Vibhushan awardee, he is also a recipient of India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, which was conferred on him in 2015.
• The government declared in 2014 that Vajpayee’s birthday, 25 December, would be marked as Good Governance Day.
• He died on 16 August 2018 due to age related illness.
• A memorial will be built, though its location is not yet decided.