President confers Bharat Ratna on Atal Bihari Vajpayee

President Pranab Mukherjee on 27 March 2015 conferred country’s highest civilian award Bharat Ratna on former Prime Minister (PM) Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
President Pranab Mukherjee by departing from protocol presented the Atal Bihari Vajpayee the prestigious award at his home in New Delhi.
In December 2014, Union Government had chosen Atal Bihari Vajpayee along with late educationist and freedom fighter Madan Mohan Malviya (posthumously) for the prestigious award.

About Atal Bihari Vajpayee

• Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born on 25 December 1924.
• He is three time Prime Minister of India. For first time he had served as PM for just 13 days in 1996 and second time for 13 months in 1998-1999.
• In his third term as PM he completed his full five-year term and became first PM from outside the Congress party to serve a full term.
• Vajpayee was amongst the founder members of erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh which later became known as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
• He was parliamentarian for over 4 decades and was elected to the Lok Sabha for 9 times, and 2 times to the Rajya Sabha.
• He was also the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Janta Government headed by Morarji Desai i.e. from 1977-79. In 2009, he retired from active politics due to health concerns.
• Some of his pet projects launched by him as PM were the National Highway Development Project and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
• Union government led by Narendra Modi has declared his birthday as Good Governance Day.

Month: Current Affairs - March, 2015