But before Vajpayee could go ahead with the requisite preparations for the historic task of declaring India a nuclear power he was ousted from the office

by Ashok Tandon 

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, during his political career spanning over six decades, always believed in personal equations and developed friendly relations across party lines. His proximity with former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao was always a matter of curious discussion within their respective political parties. During his premiership Rao had deputed Vajpayee as leader of the Indian delegation to the special session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) in Geneva where a Pakistan-sponsored resolution to censure India on its record of human rights in Jammu & Kashmir was successfully thwarted. Rao’s gesture did not go down well within his party. Salman Khurshid, the then minister of state for external affairs, was particularly upset working under Vajpayee in Geneva.

When the BJP emerged as the single largest party in the 1996 Lok Sabha election, Rao had an inkling that the US would be lobbying to deny premiership to Vajpayee in the event of a hung Lok Sabha. Washington’s apathy towards Vajpayee was clearly reflected in some declassified emails sent to Washington by the US embassy in New Delhi.

However, when the then President Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma appointed Vajpayee as the prime minister and asked him to prove his majority on the floor of the house, Rao quietly passed on a chit to Vajpayee at the Rashtrapati Bhavan swearing-in-ceremony which Vajpayee said, “Now is the time to accomplish my unfinished task.” The task Narasimha Rao had failed to accomplish during his premiership was the nuclear tests at Pokhran.

But before Vajpayee could go ahead with the requisite preparations for the historic task of declaring India a nuclear power he was ousted from the office. After the 1998 mid-term election, when Vajpayee returned to the saddle heading a coalition NDA government the first thing he did was to order nuclear tests at Pokhran on May 11 and 13, 1998, a delicate task which Indian scientists accomplished with precision, putting India in the elite global nuclear club.

According to the classified documents, the US was taken by surprise by the success of the Indian agencies in maintaining utmost secrecy and the manner in which they deceived the US intelligence. Having learned from the 1995 experience, India, under strict instructions from Vajpayee’s national security adviser Brajesh Mishra, hid its test preparations through a deception campaign, including far better concealment of the activities at Pokhran.

The author was the media adviser to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee