Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Former Prime Minister of India

Atal Bihari Vajpayee served three terms as the prime minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 to 1999, followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004. He was one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). As prime minister, he carried out the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998. The administration of Narendra Modi declared in 2014 that Vajpayee’s birthday, 25 December, would be marked as Good Governance Day. In 2015, he was conferred India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, by the president of India, Pranab Mukherjee.