Statesman politician, master orator: A timeline of Vajpayee's journey

Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, admitted to New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on June 11 with kidney and urinary infection and chest congestion, passed away on Thursday. He was 93.Often described as the moderate face of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vajpayee served as the country’s prime minister for 13 days in 1996, 13 months in 1998, and a little under five years from 1999. He was India's first non-Congress prime minister to last a full five-year term.

Vajpayee began his political career as a freedom fighter, with his first brush with politics as part of the Quit India movement of 1942. As a student, Vajpayee had briefly been inclined toward communism. But it was the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that appealed to him more. Later, influenced by Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Vajpayee in 1951 joined the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. An orator par excellence, he was lauded as a statesman politician who would go far beyond his party’s core political agenda for the larger good.

His journey in electoral politics began in 1957, when he contested the Lok Sabha elections from two seats and was elected from Uttar Pradesh’s Balrampur constituency.