Atal Bihari Vajpayee, prime minister who made India a nuclear power, dies at 93
Source: The Washington Post
By Rama Lakshmi and Sopan Joshi
August 16 at 8:41 AM
NEW DELHI — Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Indian prime minister who oversaw nuclear tests that ushered in a new arms race in South Asia starting in the late 1990s, died Aug. 16 at the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. He was 93.
The former prime minister had a stroke in 2009 that severely affected his ability to speak. He was admitted to the hospital in June after his health worsened, doctors said.
A member of Parliament for five decades, Mr. Vajpayee was sworn in three times to the country’s top elected executive office, and he forged and held together a fragile federal coalition of disparate political parties during his tenure.
From 1999 to 2004, he headed India’s first non-Congress party government that lasted a full five-year term. This was a significant achievement in a country where the Indian National Congress party — the party of the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru — had dominated politics since independence from Britain in 1947.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/atal-bihari-vajpayee-prime-minister-who-made-india-a-nuclear-power-dies-at-93/2018/08/16/e04da47e-a150-11e8-93e3-24d1703d2a7a_story.html
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