New Delhi: President Droupadi Murmu bestowed the prestigious Bharat Ratna, on veteran BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani at his residence here on Sunday.
Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu were present on the occasion.
Advani stepped into electoral politics in 1970 as a member of Rajya Sabha. He was elected to Lok Sabha for the first time in 1989 from New Delhi seat when he defeated V Mohini Giri of the Congress by 31,841 votes. In 1991, Advani contested from New Delhi and Gandhinagar as well. He won both seats defeating filmstar Rajesh Khanna by mere 1,589 votes in Delhi and winning Gandhingar by 1,25,679 votes.
He propelled the BJP into national prominence through his Rath Yatra advocating for the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya during the early 1990s.
Advani did not contest the 1996 elections on moral grounds after his name was linked to the Jain hawala case. In 1998, Advani was back in the electoral field and again won from Gandhinagar by defeating Gujarat’s former DGP and Congress candidate PK Datta by a margin of 2,76,701 votes. In 1999, he polled 1,88,944 votes more than his Congress rival former Chief Election Commissioner T N Seshan.
He was the Home Minister from 1998 to 2004 and deputy prime minister from 2002 to 2004 when BJP was in power at the Centre with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the Prime Minister.
Advani won his fifth term to the Lok Sabha in 2004 and became the leader of opposition after BJP suffered a defeat and UPA lead by Congress came to power with Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister. Though Advani continued his winning spree in 2009 he handed over the position of leader of opposition to Sushma Swaraj. He again won from Gandhinagar as BJP returned to power in 2014 with Narendra Modi at the helm but was relegated to the background as part of the party’s Marg Darshak Mandal (vision committee) of the BJP along with Murli Manohar Joshi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
This year, the Centre announced five Bharat Ratna awards, including one the BJP stalwart and former Deputy Prime Minister.
On Saturday, the President had conferred the country’s highest civilian honou, on former prime ministers P V Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh, agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan and two-time former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur, posthumously at a ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
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