Atal Bihari Vajpayee Biography - Birth date, Achievements, Career, Family, Awards

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born on 25 December 1924 in Lashkar, Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh). His father's name was Pandit Krishna Bihari Vajpayee and mother Krishna Devi. His father used to work as a teacher in the princely state of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, besides he was also a perfect poet of Hindi and Braj language.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee died on 11 June 2018 (age 93 years) in New Delhi, India because of a kidney infection problem and was admitted to AIIMS in a critical condition.

Vajpayee did his schooling at the Saraswati Shishu Mandir in Gwalior. In 1934, he joined the Anglo-Vernacular Middle (AVM) school at Baranagar in Ujjain district, after his father joined as headmaster. Later he studied BA in Hindi, English and Sanskrit at Victoria College (now Maharani Laxmi Bai Sarkar College of Excellence) in Gwalior. He completed his postgraduate studies with an MA in Political Science from DAV College, Kanpur.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee's activism began with Arya Kumar Sabha, the youth wing of the Arya Samaj movement in Gwalior, in which he became the General Secretary in 1944. He joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1939 as a swayamsevak, or volunteer. Influenced by Babasaheb Apte, he attended Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh officer training camp from 1940 to 1944, becoming a pracharak in 1947. By 1942, at the age of 16, Vajpayee became an active member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Although the RSS had not chosen to participate in the Quit India Movement, in August 1942, Vajpayee and his elder brother Prem were arrested for 24 days during the Quit India Movement. He was released after giving a written statement that he did not participate in terrorist incidents in Bateshwar on 27 August 1942 when he was part of the mob.

In 1951, Vajpayee was associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Deendayal Upadhyay, to work for the newly formed Bharatiya Jana Sangh, a Hindu right-wing political party affiliated to the RSS. He was appointed as the national secretary of the party in-charge of the northern region based in Delhi. He soon became a follower and ally of party leader Siam Prasad Mukherjee. In the Indian general election in 1957, Vajpayee contested the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament. He lost to King Mahendra Pratap in Mathura, but was elected from Balrampur. His oratory skills in the Lok Sabha impressed Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru so much that he predicted that Vajpayee would someday become the Prime Minister of India. He became the national president of the Jana Sangh in 1968, running the party along with Nanaji Deshmukh, Balraj Madhok and LK Advani.

Vajpayee was arrested along with many other opposition leaders in 1975 during the internal emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Gandhi ended the state of emergency in 1977. Several parties, including BJS, formed the Janata Party, which won the 1977 general elections. Morarji Desai, the coalition's chosen leader, became Prime Minister. Vajpayee served as a foreign minister or foreign minister in Desai's cabinet. As foreign minister, Vajpayee became the first person to deliver a speech in Hindi at the United Nations General Assembly in 1977. In 1979, Desai and Vajpayee resigned due to the collapse of the Janata Party. The then members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh came to form the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980, with Vajpayee as its first president. The 1984 general elections were conducted by the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. When he won the 1977 and 1980 elections from New Delhi, Vajpayee moved to his hometown Gwalior for the election. He served as Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from 1957-1962 for various posts starting from Balrampur. He served from Balrampur from 1967–1971, then from Gwalior from 1971–1977, and then from New Delhi from 1977–1984. Finally, he served from Lucknow in 1991–2009.

Some of the major facts of life are like this, Vajpayee remained single for a lifetime. He was also an orator and patu orator and an accomplished Hindi poet. He took courageous steps to protect the country by conducting two more nuclear tests without being distracted by the possible resentment of the nuclear power countries. In 1988, India conducted a second nuclear test at Pokhran in Rajasthan, which did not allow the CIA of America to be inaugurated. Atal has been the longest MP and the longest non-Congress Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. He was the first Prime Minister who not only gave stability to the coalition government but also successfully operated it. Atal was the first foreign minister who made India proud by giving a speech in Hindi in the United Nations. In 2012, Vajpayee was ranked 9th in Outlook magazine's poll of The Greatest Indian. In October 2018, four Himalayan peaks near Gangotri Glacier are named after him.

Narendra Modi's administration announced in 2014 that Vajpayee's birthday, December 25, would be marked as Good Governance Day. The longest tunnel in the world, Atal Tunnel in Rohtang, was named after Himachal Pradesh Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the Leh-Manali highway. Atal Setu, India's third longest cable-stay bridge over the Mandovi River, was named in his memory. Chhattisgarh government changed the name of Naya Raipur to Atal Nagar.