Jammu and Kashmir National Conference President Farooq Abdullah with Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, CPI lea... Read More

NEW DELHI: A galaxy of leaders gathered on Monday to fondly remember former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee at a memorial function and showered rich tributes on the BJP stalwart who died on Thursday after a prolonged illness.

“Vajpayee has brought together leaders cutting across the ideological divide even in his death,” Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said at the condolence meeting, adding, “It is something rare.” Azad represented Congress as party president Rahul Gandhi could not make it.

Those in attendance were PM Narendra Modi , L K Advani, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, BJP chief Amit Shah, PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, CPI’s D Raja, BSP’s Satish Mishra, Trinamool’s Derek O’Brien, former JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan among many others. Several leaders reminisced about their time with Vajpayee while heaping fulsome praise.

One man came in quietly and sat far from the VIP enclosure and left midway through the programme. He was Govindacharya, who had to leave BJP for calling Vajpayee a “mukhota”.

Shah said BJP workers would follow the path shown by the former PM as he thanked leaders of various parties who had come to the prayer meeting to pay tributes.

Azad said Vajpayee was such an eloquent speaker that even his criticism sounded pleasant whereas there were some leaders who, even when they said something good, made it sound like abuse. “The distance we see today was not there then,” he said, a reference to the frosty relations between the Modi government and the opposition.

Mehbooba Mufti, who led a coalition government with BJP in J&K till recently, called “Vajpayee a messiah for the people of Kashmir”. “He was the only PM who could understand people of Kashmir. When people talk about Kashmir, they talk about trust deficit but Vajpayee had developed trust among people of Kashmir,” she said.

Farooq Abdullah said, “The real tribute to Vajpayee will be to walk on the path shown by him. He believed in inclusiveness. Nation building should be done on the lines of what Vajpayee had dreamt of.”

