Thousands gather for the prime minister ‘Who Defeated Pakistan’

NEW DELHI:From remembering how “he defeated Pakistan in the Kargil war” to enthralling them, sometimes with his speeches and most often with a disarming smile, each of the young and old, men and women collected outside the BJP headquarters had a story to tell about why they were there on Friday morning, hoping to have a glimpse of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who passed away on Thursday.

“I felt very bad when his government was pulled down in 13 days. I had never voted till then but after that I have always voted for the BJP because of him,” said Rupak Saini, who had come from Gurgaon with his two friends. The crowds started gathering at the BJP headquarters as early as 9 am, when the procession with Vajpayee’s body was yet to leave his house.

Senior leaders Bhupender Yadav, Dharmendra Pradhan and Anurag Thakur were seen supervising the arrangements, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah took the lead in ensuring everything was in control.


Among the crowd was a group of youngsters from Batukeshwar, a village near Agra where Vajpayee’s original family hails from. “I came here to pay my last respects to a leader who made my village famous,” said Sonu Singh.

Rekha Lal said she liked Vajpayee because he reminded her of her late father. “I don’t know what all he did. But I think he was a nice man,” she said, while complaining about lack of arrangements for women to pay tributes to the departed leader.

A solemn looking BJP patriarch LK Advani sat next to Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and his wife. Chief ministers Devendra Fadnavis of Maharashtra, Raman Singh of Chhattisgarh, Shivraj Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh and Manipur’s Biren Singh were among those who paid their tributes at the BJP headquarters.

Ministers Muqtar Abbas Naqvi and Hardeep Puri left early to the cremation ground. Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman was seen consoling the family and also working with army officials for the last rites.