Atal Bihari Vajpayee (25 December 1924 – 16 August 2018) was Prime Minister of India from 16 May to 1 June 1996, succeeding P.V. Narasimha Rao and preceding H.D. Deve Gowda, and again from 19 March 1998 to 22 May 2004, succeeding I.K. Gujral and preceding Manmohan Singh. He was the first non-INC prime minister to serve a full term as Prime Minister, representing the BJP.
Biography[]
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born in Gwalior, British Raj on 25 December 1924. He became a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1939, and he became a full-time worker for the RSS in 1947. Vajpayee became an Indian nationalist activist during British rule and later became involved with Hindu nationalist groups, serving as an aide to Syama Prasad Mukherjee. From 1975 to 1977, Vajpayee and several other opposition leaders were imprisoned by Indira Gandhi's government during the state of emergency. Following the Janata Party's victory in the 1977 general elections, Vajpayee became Foreign Minister, and he had established himself as a respected statesman at the time of the government's collapse in 1979. In 1980, he became the first President of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and he opposed Gandhi's intolerant policies towards Sikhs due to the militancy that it created.
In 1996, when the BJP won the parliamentary elections, Vajpayee became Prime Minister of India. Vajpayee oversaw India's successful nuclear bomb tests, the victory over Pakistan in the Kargil War, the encouragement of private sector and foreign investments, the privatization of some government-owned corporations, a push for a free market, and the alienation of the Muslim community with his remark, "Wherever there are Muslims in large numbers, they do not want to live in peace." The economic rise of India led to the BJP gaining the support of younger and urban voters, and his birthday became known as "Good Governance Day". He died in 2018.