Advocate Bikram Sidhu, Bhartiya Janta Party's Sikh leader, member of Punjab Bajpa's executive, and Social Worker in Ludhiana pays tribute to late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his birthday by highlights his biography.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian legislator who served three terms as the Prime Minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, at then for a time of 13 months from 1998 to 1999, followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he was the first Indian prime minister not of the Indian National Congress to serve a full term in office. He was also noted as a poet and an author.
Known for his articulate expressive abilities, he was a member of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, from Lucknow from the Lower House from 1991 to 2009.
Vajpayee was one of the few leaders who were imprisoned during the Emergency forced by then PM Indira Gandhi in 1975.
The veteran leader, who led the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government from 1998-2004, was the first-person from the BJP to become the Prime Minister. He served as Prime Minister three times in 1996, from 1998-1999, and afterward for an entire five-year term between 1999 and 2004.
He was a member of the Indian Parliament for more than fifty years, having been chosen multiple times for the Lok Sabha, the lower house, and twice to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house. He served as the Member of Parliament for Lucknow, resigning from dynamic legislative issues in 2009 because of health concerns. He was among the founding members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), of which he was president from 1968 to 1972. The BJS merged with several different parties to form the Janata Party, which won the 1977 general political election. In March 1977, Vajpayee turned into the Minister of External Affairs in the bureau of Prime Minister Morarji Desai. He resigned in 1979, and the Janata alliance collapsed soon after. Former members from the BJS framed the BJP in 1980, with Vajpayee its first president.
During his residency as prime minister, India completed the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998. Vajpayee looked to improve diplomatic relations with Pakistan, traveling to Lahore by bus to meet with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. After the 1999 Kargil War with Pakistan, he looked to reestablish relations through engagement with President Pervez Musharraf, inviting him to India for a summit at Agra.
The organization of Narendra Modi proclaimed in 2014 that Vajpayee's birthday, 25 December, would be marked as Good Governance Day. In 2015, he was conferred India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee. He passed on 16 August 2018 of an age-related sickness.
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