New Delhi, Dec 24: A day earlier than their birth anniversaries, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the late freedom fighter-educationist Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya were named for India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna.

“The president has been happy to award India Ratna to Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya (posthmously) and to Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee,” a Rashtrapati Bhavan write up aforesaid.

Incidentally, each Vajpayee and Malaviya were born Dec 25 — the previous in 1924 and the latter in 1861. Their birthday has conjointly been declared as “Good Governance Day” by the govt.

The honour for Gwalior-born Vajpayee, who was the country’s prime minister 1st in 1996 and so once more from 1998 to 2004, came once years of demands from individuals across party affiliations and the public at massive.

The 90-year-old veteran politician had re-started the Bharatiya January Sangh because the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980 and was the primary head of presidency from outside the Congress party to serve a full five-year term.

He served the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, for ten terms that began in 1957 and over in 2009.

An orator par excellence, Vajpayee had earned  a lot of fame as India’s external affairs minister in Prime Minister Morarji Desai government throughout that tenure he delivered a wide acclaimed speech to the United Nations General Assembly in Hindi.

Allahabad-born Malaviya was the president of the Indian National Congress for 2 terms and was conjointly among the primary leaders of the right Hindu Mahasabha. Besides being a reformer and politician, he was conjointly an eminent educationalist.

The Banaras Hindu University was supported by him in 1916. He died a year before India’s independence Aug fifteen, 1947.