His name changed electoral fortunes
LUCKNOW: People of UP had prayed for a miracle, but the 5.30 pm medical bulletin from AIIMS confirmed their worst fears: that the worldly journey of politician poet Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 93, the country’s first non-Congress PM to complete a full term in office, had ended.
Ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government, many of whom owed their political rise to Vajpayee, wept bitterly, admitting in broken voice their admiration for a leader who had once famously said, ‘andhera chhatega, kamal khilega (lotus would blossom and darkness would give way).’ Though Muslims mostly steered clear of the BJP, they had formed ‘friends of Atal’ in Lucknow and had actively campaigned for him in elections. “Yes, we voted for him,” admitted Mohd Aslam, a government school teacher.
Vajpayee was out of active politics since 2004 but hardly any election passed by since, from Lok Sabha to local bodies, when the BJP ever forgot to use his name to find favour with the electorate in UP. Such was his craze that several young BJP leaders started copying Vajpayee in their speeches and some even started using ‘Atal’ as suffix against their names.
Election after election, BJP leaders, kept marketing not just his name but his footwear ‘khadau’ and clothes too, as confirmation of Vajpayee’s ‘blessings’ to them. Atal aide Lalji Tandon, who contested the 2009 Lok Sabha poll from Lucknow had visited the former PM in Delhi after Vajpayee’s health dipped in 2004 and said on return that he had come back with “Atalji’s khadau” (footwear), to indicate that despite being ill, Vajpayee continued to influence electoral fortunes in his home state.
“He was everything to me. Friend, leader, big brother ... Of all the people alive today I had the longest association with him ... It’s hard to imagine the world without him,” said Tandon in a choked voice.
Contesting a by-poll in Lucknow, BJP leader Amit Puri too travelled to Delhi to return with ‘Atalji’s kurta’ as proof of Vajpayee’s support to him.
In 2011, when BJP held its national executive in Lucknow the then BJP chief Nitin Gadkari had repeatedly invoked Vajpayee’s name in his address. When BJP held possibly its biggest rally in Lucknow in 2014, PM Narendra Modi who was then BJP’s PM-pick had remembered Vajpayee in his speech while no speech of union home minister Rajnath Singh, who is Lucknow MP now, is complete without a mention of Vajpayee.
UP governor Ram Naik was battling cancer when Vajpayee had visited him at his Mumbai home in 1994.
“After I recovered, Atalji showered lavish praise on me and advised me that since I had snatched life from the jaws of death, I should consider devoting my life for public welfare,” Naik reminisced, adding, “Vajpayee possessed special skills to inspire his colleagues.”
The UP governor also remembers a public meeting Vajpayee attended at Mumbai’s famous Shivaji Park after the BJP’s rout in 1984.
“There was applause as he got up to speak. Vajpayeeji said, aap log yeh dekhne aaye hain ki haara hua Atal kaisa lagta (you have come here to see how Atal looked after losing elections),” Naik recalled saying gestures like such candid admission even in defeat transformed him to a true ‘jannayak’ (mass leader).
BJP leader Narendra Singh Rana remembers how after the fall of his 13- day government, Vajpayee kept distributing sweets to all who visited him.
UP GOVERNOR RAM NAIK WAS BATTLING CANCER WHEN VAJPAYEE HAD VISITED HIM AT HIS MUMBAI HOME IN 1994.