President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday paid floral tributes to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his 96th birth anniversary at the ‘Sadaiv Atal’ Samadhi in the national capital. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Ministers including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, and Piyush Goyal also paid their respects to the late statesman at Sadaiv Atal Samadhi. In memory of the late BJP stalwart and to enable the people to pay their respects, Rashtriya Smriti Sthal, where Vajpayee was cremated with full state honours on August 17, 2018, was developed as Sadaiv Atal. Later in the day, the Prime Minister is scheduled to release a book on former Prime Minister titled ‘Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Parliament: A Commemorative Volume’. Vajpayee’s birthday is celebrated as ‘Good Governance Day’. The later leader, who led the National Democratic Alliance government from 1998-2004, was the first-ever leader from the BJP to have become the nation’s Prime Minister. Vajpayee served as Prime Minister thrice — briefly in 1996, and then for two terms between 1998 and 2004. One of the prominent leaders of the country and founder members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Vajpayee died on August 16, 2018, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) after a prolonged illness. He was 93. The late leader was conferred Bharat Ratna in 2015. He had also been awarded Pt. Govind Ballabh Pant Award for Best Parliamentarian in 1994.
