ATAL BIHARI VAJPAYEE
2000 KASHMIR ‘UNBREAKABLE’ PART OF INDIA
After the fall of the 13-month-old Vajpayee government in April 1999, the BJP-led NDA returned to power in the Lok Sabha elections held in September-October 1999. In the first Independence Day speech of his new term, Vajpayee warned Pakistan for its “undeclared war” and asserted that Kashmir will remain an “unbreakable part” of India. He warned that attempts to spread communal discord would not be tolerated. This was also the year when Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh were carved out of UP, Bihar and MP respectively.
2001
LIBERALISATION HASN’T BENEFITED EVERYONE
Two years after the Kargil conflict, India had invited Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf for summit-level talks at Agra. In his speech, Atal Bihari Vajpayee spelt out the reasons for the failure of the Agra summit, saying Musharraf had come with single-point agenda of forcing India to accept Pakistan’s terms on Kashmir. “I could not have accepted this,” he said. Taking on corruption he said, “... We cannot turn a blind eye to corruption...”
2002 FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS IN KASHMIR
As assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir were a few months away, Vajpayee promised “free and fair” polls in the troubled state. In his speech, he invoked ‘Kashmiriyat’, talked about friendly relations with Pakistan and also mentioned the Gujarat riots. “The horrific explosion of communal violence in Gujarat was one unfortunate example of this. There can be no place for such violence in a civilised society,” he said.
2003
NO POLITICAL DISCRIMINATION
This was Vajpayee’s last speech from the Red Fort as the NDA government advanced the Lok Sabha elections by six months to April 2004. Pakistan and Kashmir remained the central theme of the speech. He spoke about having established cooperative relations with states ruled by rival political parties. “Political discrimination on account of ideological differences is unacceptable to us,” he said. Vajpayee also announced that India will send it own spacecraft to Moon by 2008 and the mission was named Chandrayaan I.