L.K. Advani Biography and Works.

Lal Kishanchand Advani, popularly known as Lal Krishna Advani or L.K. Advani, was born on November 8, 1927 in Karachi, Pakistan (then, British India). He is a veteran Indian politician and a former president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP is currently the major opposition party in the country.

L.K. Advani has served as the Deputy Prime Minister of India from 2002 to 2004 and was the Leader of the Opposition in the tenth and the 14th Lok Sabha.

Advani began his political career as a worker of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and is often credited with having made the BJP an alarming force in Indian politics. He was elected as the Secretary of the RSS in 1947.

Advani has seen the formation of the BJP – from Jana Sangh to Janata Party and then the Bharatiya Janata Party. The unpopularity of the emergency called by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 helped the BJP to get a landslide victory. Advani served as the Minister of Information and Broadcasting in the Morarji Desai government.

In the 1990s, Advani took the party to new heights. BJP became the single largest party, thus forming the government with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as its Prime Minister in 1996. However, Vajpayee resigned after 13 days. The BJP again came into power under the umbrella of ‘National Democratic Alliance’ in 1998. He was also projected as Prime Ministerial candidate in 2009 elections.

The Congress emerged victorious in 2009 general elections while the BJP holds position of the main opposition. Mr. L.K. Advani has taken six major yatras throughout India, like the Ram Rath Yatra, Janadesh Yatra, Swarna Jayanti Rath Yatra, Uday Yatra and Jan Chetna Yatra. The most recent one is the Jan Chetna Yatra against corruption.

Trivia

He is married to Kamla Advani and has two children, Pratibha and Jayant.