National Conference (NC) president and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah said that the friendship between India and Pakistan was the greatest tribute to late former Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who passed away on Thursday.
“He (Vajpayee) was a great man, I cannot see the values he had in anyone today. He was from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Jana Sangh, but his ideology was opposite to theirs. He wanted India to be everybody’s. He also wanted to strike up a friendship with Pakistan. Unfortunately, he couldn’t oversee its fruition,” ANI quoted Abdullah as having said.
The former union minister hoped the current Modi led government and Imran Khan’s government in Pakistan fulfill his (Vajpayee) dream, that will be the greatest tribute to him.
PM of India, Modi described Vajpayee’s death as the “end of an era” and said he felt like he had lost a father.
“For me, personally, it is like losing a father… Whenever he met me, he used to embrace me like a father,” he said in a video message.
“He was a leader, orator, journalist, statesman and more than anything a true son of India… Atal-ji may have gone, but his ideas, views, simplicity will always inspire us Indians.”
Late former Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee will be cremated this afternoon in Delhi with full state honours. Earlier his body was kept at his home overnight and then carried by a flower-decked gun carriage to the BJP headquarters.
Vajpayee passed away at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences or AIIMS where he had earlier been admitted to in June after his health worsened.
