Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Indian statesman who was the 10th Prime Minister of India, first for 13 days in 1996 and then from 1998 to 2004. A leader of the centre-right Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he is the only Prime Minister from outside the Indian National Congress party to serve a full five-year term. A parliamentarian for over four decades, Vajpayee was elected to the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India's Parliament) nine times, and twice to the Rajya Sabha (upper house). He also served as the Member of Parliament for Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, until 2009, when he retired from active politics due to health concerns. Vajpayee was one amongst the founder members of erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which he had also headed. He was also the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Morarji Desai. When Janata government collapsed, Vajpayee restarted the Jana Sangh as the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980. He was conferred India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee in 2015. The administration of Narendra Modi declared in 2014 that Vajpayee's birthday, 25 December, would be marked as Good Governance Day. He died in New Delhi on 16 August 2018, aged 93, due to age-related illness. Link to Wikipedia biography