Our Correspondent
Kohima | September 18
Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio and opposition leader T.R. Zeliang today made obituary references on the passing away of former Prime Minister of India, Late Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Speaker of Lok Sabha, Late Somnath Chatterjee during the inter-session period.
During obituary reference, Rio said that Late Vajpayee visited Nagaland in 2003 and he travelled by road. The former PM offered Rs.365 crore to wipe out deficit and also proposed for the four-lane road from Dimapur to Kohima. By 1942, at the age of 16 years, Vajpayee became an active member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. In 1951, Vajpayee was seconded by the RSS, along with Deendayal Upadhyaya, to work for the newly formed Bharatiya Jana Sangh, a Hindu right-wing political party associated with the RSS. He was appointed as a national secretary of the party in charge of the northern region based in Delhi. In 1957, Vajpayee contested election to the Lok Sabha and lost to Raja Mahendra Pratap in Mathura, but was elected from Balrampur. During his term in Lok Sabha, his oratorical skills impressed the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru that he predicted Late Vajpayee would someday become the Prime Minister of India.
After the death of Deendayal Upadhyaya, the leadership of the Jana Sangh was passed to Vajpayee. He became the national president of the Jana Sangh in 1968, running the party along with Nanaji Deshmukh, Balraj Madhok, and LK Advani. Vajpayee remained a bachelor his entire life. He adopted and raised Namita Bhattacharya as his own child, the daughter of longtime friend Rajkumari Kaul and BN Kaul.
Somnath Chatterjee was born in Tezpur, Assam, his father, Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, was a prominent lawyer, intellectual, and Hindu revivalist and nationalist around the time of India's independence, and his mother, Binapani Debi ran the home. Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee was one of the founders and one-time president of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.
T.R Zeliang, in his remark, said that 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, and finally, for a full term from 1999 to 2004. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he was the first Indian Prime Minister who was not a member of the Indian National Congress party to have served a full five-year term in office.
He was a member of the Indian Parliament for over four decades, having been elected to the Lok Sabha, the lower house, ten times, and twice to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house. He served as the Member of Parliament from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh until 2009 when he retired from active politics due to health concerns. The BJS merged with several other parties to form the Janata Party, which won the 1977 general election. Vajpayee became the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Prime Minister Morarji Desai. He resigned in 1979, and the Janata alliance collapsed soon after. The erstwhile members of the BJS formed the BJP in 1980, with Vajpayee as its first president.
The House observed a two-minute silence and paid respect to the departed souls.
