10 unknown facts about Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Today, December 25, 2025 is 101st birth anniversary of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) icon and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Born on December 25, 1924, in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a veteran Parliamentarian whose career stretches over four decades. Vajpayee elected to the Lok Sabha nine times and to the Rajya Sabha twice, a record by itself.
Vajpayee is known as India’s most respected statesmen, a poet, and a senior leader of the BJP. Vajpayee served three terms as the Prime Minister of India – briefly in 1996, and then in two full terms from 1998 to 2004.
As India’s prime minister, foreign minister, chairperson of various important Standing Committees of Parliament and Leader of the Opposition, Atal Bihari Vajpayee had been an active participant in shaping India’s post-Independence domestic and foreign policy.
Vajpayee passed away at AIIMS, New Delhi on 16 August 2018. Here are 10 unknown facts about Atal Bihari Vajpayee:
1-In 1945, when a 21-year-old Atal Bihari Vajpayee enrolled at DAV college in Kanpur to study law, his father Pandit Krishna Biharilal Vajpayee was his classmate. Vajpayee’s father was already retired after serving 30 years as a teacher.
After Vajpayee became the prime minister, his alma mater published a write-up by him in the college magazine in 2002-03, which revealed more about the two.
2-Atal Bihari Vajpayee had embarked upon a journalist’s career, which was cut short in 1951 when he joined the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the fore-runner of today’s Bharatiya Janata Party, the leading component of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
3- Atal Bihari Vajpayee could remain a bachelor because of his ‘unwavering resolve’ which he showed by locking himself up in a friend’s house for three days when he came to know that his parents looking for a match for him, son of former PM’s friend Gorey Lal Tripathi had said in an interview in 2018.
When Vajpayee was once asked the reason behind it, he said, “I stay so busy that I forgot.”
4- Born in a Brahmin family, Atal Bihari Vajpayee loved non-veg and his favourite food was prawn. “He (Vajpayee) liked to drink moderately and eat non-vegetarian food less moderately,” veteran journalist late Vinod Mehta had written in his 2011 memoir ‘Lucknow Boy.’
5- Atal Bihari Vajpayee was imprisoned for 23 days for participating in the Quit India Movement.
6- Atal Bihari Vajpayee is the only leader to win six Lok Sabha constituencies from 4 states – UP, MP, New Delhi and Gujarat.
7- Vajpayee was a Member of Parliament for 47 years – elected 11 times from Lok Sabha and twice from Rajya Sabha.
8- Vajpayee was the first Indian politician to deliver a speech in Hindi at the United Nations General Assembly.
9- Vajpayee’s love for poetry was since childhood. He wrote is first poem when he was in class 10.
10- Vajpayee was a close follower of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh – the ideological predecessor of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
