<\/p>\n
New Delhi, Aug. 16 (TNS): Former Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has died aged 93.<\/p>\n
He was being treated for age-related illnesses in Delhi’s AIIMS hospital.<\/p>\n
Vajpayee was one of the founding members of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which currently governs India.<\/p>\n
Considered a giant of Indian politics, he served as prime minister three times between 1996 and 2004 and was instrumental in making India a global nuclear power.<\/p>\n
During his second stint as prime minister in 1998, he surprised the world by announcing that India had conducted a series of underground nuclear tests.<\/p>\n
It was the first time India had carried out nuclear tests since 1974.<\/p>\n
The experiments had taken place without any warning to the international community, which led to widespread outrage and concern.<\/p>\n
But in India he was hailed as a hero, and it helped him bolster his image as a leader who was serious about national security and not afraid of international pressure.<\/p>\n
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi led condolences in a series of tweets, calling Mr Vajpayee’s death a “personal and irreplaceable loss.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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New Delhi, Aug. 16 (TNS): Former Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has died aged 93. He was being treated for age-related illnesses in Delhi’s AIIMS hospital. Vajpayee was one of the founding members of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which currently governs India. Considered a giant of Indian politics, he served […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75722,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75719\/revisions\/75722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}