Former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee is responding to his treatment: AIIMS

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was admitted for a treatment of urinary tract infection and some routine check-ups to New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences is fine now, sources of the hospital says.

Vajpayee, 93, was hospitalised on the advice of his personal physician. At AIIMS, he is being looked after under the supervision of Dr Randeep Guleria, a pulmonologist and current director at AIIMS. Incidentally, Dr Guleria is acting as a personal physician to Vajpayee for over three decades.

Rahul Gandhi too has visited AIIMS to inquire about his health yesterday.

Vajpayee, the first prime minister of India, outside the Congress party to serve a full five-year term, is a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna– country’s top civilian honour, in 2015.

Vajpayee had served India’s top institution of democracy for about 40 years. He got elected to the Lok Sabha ten times, and two times to the Rajya Sabha. He was the Member of Parliament for Lucknow, until 2009, when he volunteered retirement from active politics due to health reasons.

Altal Ji was the top founder members of Bharatiya Jana Sangh. He served as the Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Morarji Desai. When Janata government disintegrated, Vajpayee founded the Jana Sangh as the Bharatiya Janata Party in the year 1980.

Vajpayee informally entered the politics in August 1942, when he along with his brother Prem courted arrests. They were imprisoned for 23 days during the Quit India Movement. It is said that they were released after giving a written undertaking, expressly declared that they would not participate in the freedom struggle.

In the year of 1948, he was appointed as a national secretary of the Jan Sangh in charge of the Northern region. Vajpayee soon became an aide of the stalwart of the party Syama Prasad Mukherjee.

Vajpayee was defeated by Raja Mahendra Pratap in Mathura for the Lok Sabha in 1957 election. The relief was that he was elected from Balrampur. His speeches in parliament impressed the then Prime Minister Nehru Ji so much that he predicted that Vajpayee would someday become India’s Prime Minister.