Former prime minister and BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee passed away today, at the age of 92. He was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in June, and had been ailing for quite some time. The leader had minimised political activities in the last decade, following the deterioration of his health. AIIMS released a press release saying, “It is with profound grief that we inform about the sad demise of former prime minister of India, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee at 5.05 pm on 16.08.2018. Shri Vajpayee was admitted in AIIMS on 11.06.2018 and was stable in the last 9 weeks under the care of a tam of AIIMS doctors. Unfortunately, his condition deteriorated over the last 36 hours and he was put on life support systems. Despite the best of efforts, we have lost him today. We join the Nation in deeply mourning this great loss.”
The BJP patriarch was regularly visited by a host of leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had called upon him personally twice. He met the doctors and enquired about the well-being of Vajpayee, and also met with his family members. Others to visit him at the hospital were BJP veteran LK Advani, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, BJP president Amit Shah, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, Health Minister JP Nadda and Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan. The first non-Indian Nation Congress prime minister to serve a full five-year term, Vajpayee was born in 1924.
Part of the Quit India movement, he later became a full-time RSS Pracharak, and then, owing to his oratory skills, became the face of the Jan Sangh (current day BJP). In 1977, he became the external affairs minister in former PM Morarji Desai's Cabinet. His first stint as PM in 1996, only lasted for 16 days. Then again, he took up office from 1998 to 2004. With a parliamentary experience that spanned over four decades, Vajpayee was elected to the Lok Sabha ten times, and twice to the Rajya Sabha.
He is associated with the historic inauguration of the Delhi-Lahore bus service in February 1999, in a bid to mend differences with Pakistan. With the bus service, he initiated a new peace process aimed towards permanently resolving the Kashmir dispute.
