| 10th Prime Minister of India | |
|---|---|
| In office 19 March 1998 – 22 May 2004 |
|
| President | K. R. Narayanan A. P. J. Abdul Kalam |
| Deputy | L. K. Advani |
| Preceded by | I. K. Gujral |
| Succeeded by | Manmohan Singh |
| In office 16 May 1996 – 1 June 1996 |
|
| President | Shankar Dayal Sharma |
| Vice President | K. R. Narayanan |
| Preceded by | P. V. Narasimha Rao |
| Succeeded by | H. D. Deve Gowda |
| Minister of External Affairs | |
| In office 26 March 1977 – 28 July 1979 |
|
| Prime Minister | Morarji Desai |
| Preceded by | Yashwantrao Chavan |
| Succeeded by | Shyam Nandan Prasad Mishra |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 25 December 1924 Gwalior, Gwalior State, British India (now in Madhya Pradesh, India) |
| Political party | Bharatiya Janata Party (1980–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
Janata Party (1977—1980) Bharatiya Jana Sangh (before 1977) |
| Alma mater | DAV College, Kanpur (then affiliated with Agra University) |
| Profession | Writer, Politician, Poet |
| Awards | Bharat Ratna (2015) Padma Vibhushan (1992) |
| Signature |  |
Atal Bihari Vajpayee (born 25 December 1924) is an Indian politician who was the 10th Prime Minister of India, first for 13 days in 1996 and then from 1998 to 2004. A leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he is the first Prime Minister from outside the Indian National Congress party to serve a full five-year term. At age 92, Vajpayee is currently the oldest living former Indian Prime Minister.
A parliamentarian for over four decades, Vajpayee was elected to the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament of India) ten times, and twice to the Rajya Sabha (upper house). He also served as the Member of parliament for Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, until 2009, when he retired from active politics due to health concerns. Vajpayee was one amongst the founder members of erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which he had also headed. He was also the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Morarji Desai. When Janata governmentcollapsed, Vajpayee restarted the Jana Sangh as the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980.
On 25 December 2014 the office of President of India announced the Bharat Ratna award, India’s highest civilian honour, to Vajpayee. In a special gesture, the President of India conferred Bharat Ratna to Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his residence on 27 March 2015. His birthday, 25 December, was declared “Good Governance Day”.
Vajpayee was born to Krishna Devi and Krishna Bihari Vajpayee on 25 December 1924 in Gwalior. His grandfather, Pandit Shyam Lal Vajpayee, had migrated to Morena, Gwalior from his ancestral village of Bateshwar, Uttar Pradesh. His father, Krishna Bihari Vajpayee, was a poet and a schoolmaster in his hometown. Vajpayee did his schooling from the Saraswati Shishu Mandir, Gorkhi, Bara, Gwalior. Vajpayee attended Gwalior’s Victoria College (now Laxmi Bai College) and graduated with distinction in Hindi, English and Sanskrit. He completed his post-graduation with an M.A. in Political Science from DAV College, Kanpur, and was awarded a first-class degree.
His activism started with Arya Kumar Sabha of Gwalior, the youth wing of the Arya Samaj, of which he became the General Secretary in 1944. He also joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a swayamsevak in 1939. Influenced by Babasaheb Apte, he attended the Officers Training Camp of the RSS during 1940-44 and became a “full-time worker” in 1947, technically a pracharak. He gave up studying law due to the partition riots. He was sent as a vistarak (probationary pracharak) to Uttar Pradesh and quickly began working for the newspapers of Deendayal Upadhyaya, Rashtradharma (a Hindi monthly), Panchjanya (a Hindi weekly) and the dailies Swadesh and Veer Arjun. Vajpayee never married and has remained a bachelor his entire life.
Vajpayee underwent knee replacement surgery at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai in 2001. He suffered a stroke in 2009 which impaired his speech. His health has been a major source of concern and those in the know say he is often confined to a wheelchair and fails to recognise people. He is said to be suffering from dementia and long-term diabetes. He is not known to have attended any public event in recent years. He rarely ventures out of the house, except for checkups at the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences
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