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| Atal Bihari Vajpayee |
Today I am going to write about one of India's greatest and prominent shapers of India. He is one of the greatest Prime Ministers of India ever lived and the one who transformed the whole India into a modern and liberal country. He is the first non-congress prime minister who completed his term as the Prime Minister. He was elected as the 10 prime minister of India and also mended the external affairs ministry portfolio in the office of Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Today is that prestigious and wonderful day when he was born in the year 1924. That person is none other than India's former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born to Krishna Devi and Krishna Bihari Vajpayee on 25 December 1924 in a middle-class, Brahmin family. His grandfather, Pandit Shyam Lal Vajpayee, had migrated to Gwalior from his ancestral village of Bateshwar, Uttar Pradesh.
Vajpayee attended Laxmi Bai College and graduated with distinction in Hindi, English and Sanskrit. He completed his post graduation with MA in political science from DAV College, Kanpur in first class. Later he became a full-time worker Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). For some time he studied law but he left Law midstream and chose to pursue journalism. During this course of time he also edited many magazines, newspapers like Rashtradharma (a Hindi monthly), Panchjanya (a Hindi weekly) and the dailies Swadesh and Veer Arjun.
Vajpayee first got a whiff of his later aim in August 1942, when he and his elder brother Prem were arrested for 23 days during the Quit India movement. This was his first tryst with Politics.
In 1951 he was deputed to work for newly formed Bhartiya Jana Sangh, a right wing political party assosiated with RSS and raised the hindu cause.
He soon became a follower and aide of party leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee. In 1954, Vajpayee was with Mookerjee when he went on a fast-unto-death in Kashmir to protest against perceived inferior treatment of non-Kashmiri Indian visitors to the state. Mookerjee died in prison during this strike. In 1957, Vajpayee was elected to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India's Parliament, where his oratorial skills so impressed Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that he predicted that Vajpayee would someday become India's Prime Minister. Due to his charismatic oratory he was soon promoted to become the youth face of Jana Sangh. After the demise of Deendayal Upadhya, party's leadership fell on his shoulders. He was also collared and prisoned from 1975 to 1977 during the emergency imposed by Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Heeding to the call of Shri Jayprakash Narayan for the unification of non-congress party he played a major role in uniting the non-congress party and also formed government in 1977 election and bacame the external affairs ministry.
Vajpayee joined many of his Bharatiya Jana Sangh and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh colleagues, particularly his long-time friends Lal Krishna Advani and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, to found the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980. He became the BJP's first President. He emerged as a strong critic of the Congress (I) government that followed the Janata government.
BJP's strength and stature soared high in early 1955 and in 1966 the party got a clear majority in the elections. The then president Shankar Dayal Sharma invited BJP to form the government but BJP failed to maintain that majority and in 13 days his government collapsed and obliterated.
But in 1998 he also got another chance(1998-1999). In this term he conducted five underground nuclear test in Pokhran Desert of Rajasthan. Despite of pressure from foreign countries he listened to no one and conducted the tests.
In 1999 India got to know about the infiltration of Pakistani soldiers in the Kashmiri Valleys which finally resulted in the Kargil war, which was clearly won by Indians thrashing Pakistan under the leadership of Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
But after the withdrawal of support from J. Jayalalitha's AIADMK from the coalition government and again Vajpayee's government collapsed. But in 1999 BJP led NDA government got 303 seats out of 543 and this government continued for full five years.
A.B. Vajpayee introduced many reforms in the country. He gave India its nuclear weapons, he made India won the Kargil War, he commenced many schemes like Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, National Highway Development Project.
He also developed cordial and benign foreign relationship. He met former presidents of USA Mr. Bill Clinton and Mr. Bush also and also made docile relationship with Russia and met Russian president Vladmir Puting too.
Later in 2005 he announced and proclaimed hs retirement form active politics, and today celebrated his 88th birthday.
May this great man live long.
Jai Ma Bharti
Jai Hind, Jai Bharat.
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