Bengaluru: Condoling the death of former PM A.B. Vajpayee on Thursday, state BJP president B.S. Yeddyurappa called it a great loss to the country, and especially the BJP to which he had dedicated his life.
Recalling Mr Vajpayee’s assertion in his speech at the Mumbai plenary session of the BJP in 1980 when it had only two seats in the Lok Sabha, that “Andhera jayega, suraj niklega, kamal khilega ( darkness will go, the sun will rise and the lotus will bloom),” he said it was his vision and optimism in politics that had motivated the workers and leaders of the party to build it. “It is because of Vajpayeeji’s contribution to building the party that Mr Narendra Modi has become PM today. I not only love and adore Vajpayeeji, but I am also a great admirer of his political traits, which appealed to people of all castes, creeds and communities. He lived like an ajatha shatru,” Mr. Yeddyurappa concluded.
Senior BJP leader Ramachandra Gowda, recalled that the former Prime Minister was a devotee of Puttaparthi Sai Baba and would arrive unobtrusively in Bengaluru to take his blessings.
“Before arriving in Bengaluru he would telephone me and I would pick him up from the airport in a taxi and escort him to Puttaparthi,” he said.
He also recalled that when he was the president of the Bengaluru city unit of the party and Mr A.K. Subbaiah its state president in 1981, Mr Vajpayee came to Bengaluru and he took him to garland Mahatma Gandhi’s statue on M.G. Road. “Seeing the late CM Gundu Rao on a hunger strike nearby against the Ramakrishna Hegde government, Atalji met him. He frequently visited the state to campaign in elections and one day spent a whole day in Kalaburgi without having a thing to eat. When one of his diehard supporters committed suicide in Bhadravathi after he was defeated in the Lok Sabha elections, Atalji came to Bengaluru and taking a train to Shivamogga, visited his family,” he recollected.
