Atal Bihari Vajpayee served as the thirteenth and sixteenth Prime Minister of India. After a brief stint as Prime Minister in 1996, Vajpayee headed a coalition government from October 13, 1999 until May 19, 2004. He has since retired from active politics, though as a Member of Parliament, he has at times commented on various issues.

He holds the distinction of being a well-educated politician, having earned a masters degree in political science from the Victoria College (now Laxmibai College) and DAV College. He is well-known for being a poet, eminent journalist, and has published a book of poetry. He is a bachelor, and has adopted daughters of Mrs & Mr. B. N. Kaul: Nandita (Nanni) and Namita (Gunu). Nandita is a doctor in US and Namita lives in Delhi. Nandita is married to Ashok Nanda, a software engineer and Namita is married to Ranjan Bhattacharya and has a daughter. He is the first and thus far, only, bachelor prime minister of India. He has an official website: http://www.atalbiharivajpayee.in.

Vajpayee's involvement in politics began as a freedom-fighter. He is supposed to have participated in the Quit India Movement. He soon became a close follower and aide to Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the leader of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS). Vajpayee was at Mookerjee's side when he went on a fast-unto-death in Kashmir in 1953, to protest what the BJS claimed inferior treatment of non-Kashmiri Indian visitors in Kashmir. Mookerjee's fast and protest ended the identity card requirement, and hastened the integration of Kashmir into the Indian Union. However, Mookherjee died soon after due to health problems caused by his confinement in jail.

As the leader of BJS, he expanded its political appeal, organization and agenda. Vajpayee was elected to the Parliament in 1957 from Balrampur. In spite of his youth, he soon became a respected voice in the opposition. His broad appeal brought respect, recognition and acceptance to a rising nationalist cultural movement.

He has always been a man of written words -the true scribe of Sage Vyasa of Hinduism -who wrote the Mahabharatha.He edited Rashtradharma (a Hindi monthly), Panchjanya (a Hindi weekly) and the dailies Swadesh and Veer Arjun. His published works include \"Meri Sansadiya Yatra\" (in four volumes), \"Meri Ikkyavan Kavitayen\", \"Sankalp Kaal\", \"Shakti-se-Shanti\", \"Four Decades in Parliament\" (speeches in three volumes), 1957-95, \"Lok Sabha mein Atalji\" (a collection of speeches); Mrityu Ya Hatya\", \"Amar Balidan\", \"Kaidi Kaviraj Ki Kundalian\" (a collection of poems written in jail during Emergency); \"New Dimensions of India's Foreign Policy\" (a collection of speeches delivered as External Affairs Minister during 1977-79); \"Jan Sangh Aur Mussalman\"; \"Sansad Mein Teen Dashak\" (Hindi) (speeches in Parliament - 1957-1992 - three volumes; and \"Amar Aag Hai\" (a collection of poems) 1994.

Shri Vajpayee has participated in various social and cultural activities. He has been a Member of the National Integration Council since 1961. Some of his other associations include - (i) President, All India Station Masters and Assistant Station Masters Association (1965-70); (ii) Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Smarak Samiti (1968-84); (iii) Deen Dayal Dham, Farah, Mathura, U.P; and (iv) Janmabhomi Smarak Samiti, 1969 onwards.

Founder-member of the erstwhile Jana Sangh (1951), President, Bharatiya Jana Sangh (1968-1973), leader of the Jana Sangh parliamentary party (1955-1977) and a founder-member of the Janata Party (1977-1980), Shri Vajpayee was President, BJP (1980-1986) and the leader of BJP parliamentary party during 1980-1984, 1986 and 1993-1996. He was Leader of the Opposition throughout the term of the 11th Lok Sabha. Earlier, he was India's External Affairs Minister in the Morarji Desai Government from March 24, 1977 to July 28, 1979.

Widely respected within the country and abroad as a statesman of the genre of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, Shri Vajpayee's 1998-99 stint as Prime Minister has been characterised as 'one year of courage of conviction'.

While the Bharatiya Jana Sangh had strong constituencies of support, it failed to dislodge the Indian National Congress from governance. The newly formed Congress(I) under Indira Gandhi came to power in 1967 and 1971. When Indira Gandhi declared state of emergency in 1975, the RSS and BJS joined a wide-array of parties in opposing the suspension of elections and civil liberties. Vajpayee, along with many of his colleagues, was briefly jailed during that period.

However, when the general election was held in 1977 following the resignation of Indira Gandhi, the BJS joined hands with a vast collage of regional groups, socialist parties and similar groups to form the Janata Party. The party swept the polls and formed a new government with Morarji Desai as Prime Minister. Vajpayee won the election from New Delhi parliamentary constituency and was sworn in as the Minister for External Affairs.

In a tenure lasting two years, Vajpayee achieved several milestones. He went on a historic visit to China in 1979, normalizing relations with China for the first time since the 1962 Sino-Indian War. He also visited Pakistan and initiated normal dialogue and trade relations that were frozen since the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War and subsequent political instability in both countries. Vajpayee represented the nation at the Conference on Disarmament, where he defended the national nuclear program, the centerpiece of national security in the Cold War world, especially with neighboring China being a nuclear power. (In 1974, India had become the sixth nuclear power of the world when she conducted an underground nuclear test at Pokhran.) Although he resigned in 1979 when the government politically attacked the RSS, he had established his credentials as an experienced statesman and a respected political leader. During this tenure, he also became the first person to deliver a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in Hindi (in 1977), the \"most unforgettable\" moment in his life by his own admission.

The Janata government did not last long. Morarji Desai resigned as Prime Minister, and the Janata party was dissolved soon after. The BJS had devoted political organization to sustain the coalition and was left exhausted by the internecine wars within the Janata Party.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, along with many BJS and RSS colleagues, particularly his long-time and close friends Lal Krishna Advani and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, founded the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980. Vajpayee became its first President. The BJP was a strong critic of the Congress(I) government that followed the Janata rule, and while it opposed the Sikh militancy that was rising in the state of Punjab, it also blamed Indira Gandhi for divisive and corrupt politics that fostered the militancy at national expense. Leader Darasingh opines that Vajpayee thus \"brought in Hindu-Sikh harmony.\"

Although it supported Operation Bluestar, the BJP strongly protested violence against Sikhs in Delhi that broke out in 1984 following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by one of her Sikh bodyguards. Vajpayee was known and commended for protecting Sikhs against Congress-followers seeking to avenge the death of their leader. The BJP was left with only two parliamentary seats in the 1984 elections; the party, however, had established itself in the mainstream of Indian politics, and soon began expanding its organization to attract young Indians throughout the country. During this period Vajpayee remained center-stage as party President and Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, but increasingly hard-line Hindu nationalists began to rise within the party and define its politics.

The BJP became the political voice of the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir Movement, which was led by activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the RSS, and was seeking to build a temple dedicated to Lord Rama at the site of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya. Hindu activists believed the site was the birthplace of the Lord, and thus qualified as one of the most sacred sites of Hinduism.

On December 6, 1992, hundreds of VHP and BJP activists broke down an organized protest into a frenzied attack, and brought down the mosque. Over the following weeks, waves of violence between Hindus and Muslims erupted in various parts of the country, killing over 1000 people. The VHP was banned by the government, and many BJP leaders including Lal Krishna Advani were arrested briefly for provoking the destruction. Although widely condemned by many across the country for playing politics with sensitive issues, the BJP won the loyalty and support of millions of conservative Hindus, as well as national prominence.

With victory in assembly elections of Gujarat and Maharashtra in March 1995, and a good performance in the elections to the Karnataka assembly in December 1994 propelled the BJP to the centerstage. During the BJP session at Mumbai in November 1995, BJP President L.K.Advani declared that Vajpayee would be the Prime Minister of India if the BJP won next parliamentary elections held in May 1996.