Atal Bihari Vajpayee

About:

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a former prime minister who was also known for his master oratory and poems.

Political career:

• He was a member of the Indian Parliament for over four decades.
  
  
• In 1951, he joined the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which was restructured into Bharatiya Janata Party by him in 1980.
  
  
• He was the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Prime Minister Morarji Desai. As a foreign minister, he was the first person to speak in Hindi in the United Nations in 1977.
  
  

Prime minister:

• He served as the Prime Minister of India (PM), thrice:
  • first for a term of 13 days in 1996,
    
    
  • then for a period of eleven months from 1998 to 1999, and
    
    
  • then for a full term from 1999 to 2004.
    
    
  
  
  
• He was the first PM who was not a member of the Indian National Congress party to have served a full five-year term in office.
  
  
• He is also the first and only person since Jawaharlal Nehru to occupy the office of PM through three successive Lok Sabhas. 
  
  

Honours:

• He was conferred Padma Vibhushan in 1992 and Bharat Ratna in 2015.
  
  
• In 1994, he was given the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award.
  
  
• Since 2014, his birthday, 25 December, is marked as Good Governance Day.
  
  
• In 2015, he was conferred the Bangladesh Liberation War honour (Bangladesh Muktijuddho Sanmanona).