Vajpayee’s portrait to be installed in Parliament on February 12, six months after his demise

Nearly six months after the demise of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, his life-size portrait will be installed in the Central Hall of Parliament on February 12 as a mark of honour for the towering late BJP leader.

The portrait of the Bharat Ratna will be unveiled by President Ram Nath Kovind in the presence of Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ministers and leaders of various parties, official sources said on Wednesday.

Vajpayee, a towering BJP leader, was the Prime Minister thrice – first for 13 days in 1996, then for 13 months from 1998 to 1999, and then from 1999 to 2004.

Born on December 25, 1924, in Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, the BJP veteran passed away on August 16, 2018, after a prolonged illness.

The decision to install the portrait of the Bharat Ratna was taken on December 18 at a meeting of Parliament’s Portrait Committee chaired by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

The meeting, which was attended by Deputy Speaker M. Thambi Durai, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, BJD's B Mahtab, TMC's Sudip Bondopadhyay, TRS` Jithendra Reddy, Shiv Sena's Ananth Geete and BJP's Satyanarayan Jatia, had taken the decision unanimously. 

The leaders whose portraits already adorn the Central Hall include former Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. 

Earlier, on the eve of Vajpayee’s 94th birthday, Prime Minister Modi released a commemorative coin in memory of the late leader on December 24, 2018, in the presence of Sumitra Mahajan and some ministers.

The commemorative coin has the Emblem of India on one side and on the other side, Vajpayee’s picture with his name inscribed in Devanagari and Roman languages.

Paying rich tributes to Vajpayee, Modi said on the occasion that the former Prime Minister had never compromised on the party’s ideology.

He said Vajpayee had always pitched for the supremacy of democracy and was unlike those leaders for whom power is oxygen.