Early Life

• Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born to Krishna Devi and Krishna Bihari Vajpayee on 25 December 1924 in Gwalior. His father, Krishna Bihari Vajpayee, was a poet and a schoolmaster in his hometown.
• Atal Bihari Vajpayee did his schooling from the Saraswati Shishu Mandir, Gorkhi, Bara, Gwalior. Vajpayee attended Gwalior’s Victoria College (now Laxmi Bai College) and graduated with distinction in Hindi, English and Sanskrit.

  

• He completed his post-graduation with an M.A. in Political Science from DAV College, Kanpur, and university awarded a him first-class degree.

RSS Worker

• Later he joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a swayamsevak in 1939. He became a “full-time worker” in 1947, technically a pracharak.
• As a Result Atal Bihari Vajpayee never married and has remained a bachelor his entire life.
• In 1951, RSS recommended him along with Deendayal Upadhyaya, to work for the newly formed Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

BJP Leadership

• The BJP leadership appointed him as a national secretary of the party in charge of the Northern region, based in Delhi. He soon became a follower and aide of party leader Syama Prasad Mukherjee.
• In 1954, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was with Mukherjee when he went on a fast-unto-death in Kashmir. He protested against perceived inferior treatment of non-Kashmiri Indian visitors to the state. Mookerjee died in prison during this strike.
• In 1957, Atal Bihari Vajpayee lost to Raja Mahendra Pratap in Mathura for the Lok Sabha but was elected from Balrampur.
• There, his oratorial skills impressed Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru predicted that Vajpayee would someday become India’s Prime Minister.
• By virtue of his oratorical and organizational skills, he became the face of the Jana Sangh.
• After the death of Deendayal Upadhyaya, the mantle of the leadership of Jana Sangh fell on the shoulders of a young Vajpayee.
• He became the national president of the Jana Sangh in 1968 and, along with Nanaji Deshmukh, Balraj Madhok and L. K. Advani, led the Jana Sangh to national prominence.
• From 1975 to 1977, Police arrested Atal Bihari Vajpayee along with several other opposition leaders during the Internal Emergency. The Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian National Congress party imposed emergency. 

Central Government Minister

• In 1977, Atal Bihari Vajpayee merged the Jana Sangh into the newly formed grand-alliance, the Janata Party.
• Following Janata’s victory in the 1977 general elections, he became the Minister of External Affairs in Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s cabinet.

  

• By the time the Janata government crumbled in 1979, Vajpayee had established himself as an experienced statesman and a respected political leader.
• The Morarji Desai resignation dissolved Janta Party in 1979.
• Atal Bihari Vajpayee joined many of his Bharatiya Jana Sangh and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh colleagues, particularly his long-time friends L. K. Advani to form the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980.
• He became the BJP’s first President. He emerged as a strong critic of the Congress (R) government that followed the Janata government.
• The BJP was left with only two parliamentary seats in the 1984 elections. During this period, Vajpayee remained at the centre-stage as party President and Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament.

Rise to Power

• The BJP became the political voice of the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir Movement.
• Under his leadership BJP won assembly elections in Gujarat and Maharashtra in March 1995.
• A good performance in the elections to the Karnataka assembly in December 1994, propelled the BJP to greater political prominence.
• During a BJP conference in Mumbai in November 1995, BJP President L. K. Advani declared that Vajpayee would become the Prime Minister of India.

Prime Minister for 13 Days

• The BJP grew in strength in the early 1995 riding on pro-nationalistic sentiments. In the 1996 general elections, the BJP emerged as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha.
• The then president Shankar Dayal Sharma invited Vajpayee to form the government. The president sworn Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the 10th Prime Minister of India, but the BJP failed to muster enough support from other parties to obtain a majority. He resigned after 13 days, when it became clear that he could not garner a majority.

Prime Minister for 13 Months

• In 1998, the president dissolved Lok Sabha and fresh elections were held in India. The 1998 general elections again put the BJP ahead of others. This time, a cohesive bloc of political parties joined the BJP to form the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and Atal Bihari Vajpayee was sworn in as the Prime Minister.
• The NDA proved its majority in the parliament but his government lasted 13 months.
• In February 1999, Vajpayee initiated a new peace process aimed towards permanently resolving the Kashmir dispute and other conflicts with Pakistan. The resultant Lahore Declaration espoused a commitment to dialogue, expanded trade relations and mutual friendship and envisaged a goal of denuclearize South Asia
• In mid-1999,  the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) under Jayalalitha withdrew its support to the government. The government lost the ensuing vote of confidence motion in the Lok Sabha by a single vote on 17 April 1999.
• The Atal Bihari Vajpayee administration was reduced to a caretaker status. The president scheduled fresh election for October 1999.
• Soon Pakistan Army infiltrated into the Kashmir Valley and captured control of border hilltops, unmanned border posts and were spreading out fast. The Pakistan attack was centered around the town of Kargil. Indian army launched Operation Vijay in June 1999. The people hailed Vajpayee and his image was improved drastically in eyes of voters.

Prime Minister for 5 Years

• In the 1999 general elections, the BJP-led NDA won 303 seats out of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, in the aftermath of the Kargil operations, thereby securing a comfortable and stable majority.
• During his administration, Atal Bihari Vajpayee introduced many domestic economic and infrastructural reforms, including encouraging the private sector and foreign investments, reducing governmental waste, encouraging research and development and privatisation of some government owned corporations.
• Vajpayee’s weakening health was also a subject of public interest, and he underwent a major knee-replacement surgery at the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai to relieve great pressure on his legs.
• Atal Bihari Vajpayee again broke the ice in the Indo-Pak relations by inviting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to Delhi and Agra for a joint summit and peace talks. His second major attempt to move beyond the stalemate involved inviting the man who had planned the Kargil invasions. But summit failed to achieve a breakthrough as President Musharraf declined to leave aside the issue of Kashmir.
• In 2002, Hindu-Muslim violence in the state Gujarat killed more than 1,000 people. Vajpayee officially condemned the violence. The Media accused Vajpayee for doing nothing to stop the violence, and later admitted mistakes in handling the events.

Economic Policy

• Vajpayee promoted pro-business, free market reforms to reinvigorate India’s economic transformation and expansion. The former PM Narasimha Rao started these reforms but reforms were stalled after 1996 due to unstable governments.

  

• Soon Vajpayee’s administration earned the ire of many trade unions and government workers for its aggressive campaign to privatise government owned corporations.
• In late 2002 and 2003, the country’s GDP growth accelerated at record levels, exceeding 6–7%.
• Increasing foreign investment, modernisation of public and industrial infrastructure, the creation of jobs, a rising high-tech and IT industry and urban modernisation. Good crop harvests and strong industrial expansion also helped the economy.

Fall of Vajpayee Government

• As the BJP prepared for general elections in 2004, Vajpayee was still the choice of the BJP and of the wider NDA, for the Prime Minister’s job.
• But the attention of the media and of millions now moved from Vajpayee to his more possible successor, L. K. Advani.Vajpayee’s age, failing health and diminished physical and mental vigour were obvious factors in such speculation.
• The people expected NDA retain power after the 2004 general election. However, the BJP lost almost half of its seats in the election.
• The Indian National Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi, became the single largest party and, along with many minor parties, formed the United Progressive Alliance.
• With the conditional support of the leftist parties from the outside, the UPA formed a government under Manmohan Singh. Vajpayee resigned as Prime Minister and promised co-operation to the new government.
• Accepting moral responsibility for the defeat, he decided not to take up the position of the Leader of the Opposition and passed on the leadership mantle to L. K. Advani.
• The UPA Government on 1 July 2013 accepted before Supreme Court that National Democratic Alliance Government led by Vajpayee has developed half the roads in last 32 years in their 5-year term.

Retirement

• In December 2005, Vajpayee announced his retirement from active politics, declaring that he would not contest in the next general election.
• Vajpayee was referred to as the Bhishma Pitamah of Indian Politics by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his speech in the Rajya Sabha.

Personal life

• Vajpayee is a lifelong celibate and has an adopted daughter, Namita.
• His family hospitalised him at AIIMS for chest infection and fever on 6 February 2009. Soon doctor put him on ventilator support as his condition worsened but he eventually recuperate. Later doctor discharged him.
• Later he suffered a stroke in 2009 which impaired his speech.
• His health has been a major source of concern and those in the know say he is often confined to a wheelchair and fails to recognise people.
• The doctor told his family that he was suffering from dementia and long-term diabetes. He did not attended any public event in recent years. He rarely ventures out of the house, except for checkups at the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences.
• On 11 June 2018, Vajpayee was admitted to AIIMS in critical condition following a kidney infection. He was officially declared dead there at 5:05 pm IST on 16 August 2018. He died at the age of 93.