Some time in the last week of October of 1999, we were sitting with Atalji at his residence. The mood at this informal gathering was upbeat, and rightly so. Atalji had been sworn-in the Prime Minister for the third time in a row on October 13, 1999, after winning the mid-term elections for the 13th Lok Sabha held a few months after India’s decisive victory in the Kargil war against Pakistan.

Suddenly someone, I don’t exactly remember who, floated an idea. It is high time the country honoured the hero of the Kargil victory. Everybody asked “who”. “Atalji should be bestowed the Bharat Ratna.” After all, he is a third-time PM with more than four decades of distinguished and unblemished public service, the proposer contented.

There was complete silence for a few seconds. Each one of us was jubilant and thought silence meant Atalji’s consent. But raising his hand, he said “No. Nothing doing”.

”The Kargil victory was the achievement of our valiant defence forces. How I can take credit for it,” Atalji argued. And victory in the 1999 elections was a people’s mandate to continue the good work. “Nothing doing, Hum yeh shrey nahin le sakte (I can’t take this credit),” he asserted.

Then the debate started in right earnest and everyone strongly pleaded with Atalji that there was nothing wrong in it. After all, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were honoured with Bharat Ratna as PMs.

“ Hum apne haathon apne hee ko Bharat Ratna kaise de sakte hain? (How can I award myself the Baharat Ratna?),” was his objection. Why not, argued someone in the gathering. If Nehru and Indira Gandhi could be awarded Bharat Ratna when in office, why can’t he?

“ Ham swayam ko Bharat Ratna nahin deinge. Ab aur bahas nahin. Iss baat ko yahin khatam karo” (I won’t do it. There will be no more talk of it),” he ordered.

The matter didn’t end there. Later, he got angry, when he came to know that plans were afoot to clinch the matter at a Cabinet meeting, in his absence, when he would be travelling abroad. He warned everyone against any such move.

I remember someone saying, “we will do it at an appropriate time”.

Incidentally, the issue of Bharat Ratna for Atalji had come up even earlier.

On the eve of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, LK Advani, who was BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, had written to then PM Manmohan Singh proposing that Atalji be awarded the Bharat Ratna for his contribution to the national polity and for his statesmanship.

The BJP had also demanded the highest civilian award for Atalji after the government announced the honour for cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and scientist CNR Rao.

Cutting across party lines, leaders of several political parties had endorsed the Bharat Ratna for Atalji, whom Manmohan Singh once described as the Bheeshma Pitamah of Indian politics.

Farooq Abdullah was the first to back the demand, saying Vajpayee is bigger that the award itself. “I am not a BJP man, but I am an Indian, and I think no one can forget that he is a fine leader,” Abdullah said, adding that “I would personally request that such a big personality, who is bigger than the Bharat Ratna, should be given the due honour. and it should be given now itself.”

Setting aside his differences with his former NDA ally, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, too, backed the demand to bestow the award on the former PM. “He deserves it. Why should it not be given to him,” Kumar, who had served as Railway Minister in the Vajpayee Cabinet, said.

Another socialist leader Shivanand Tiwari also insisted that the former PM deserved the award.

A Minister in the Manmohan Singh government, Pallam Raju, too, stated that “Atal Bihari Vajpayee has been a great statesman, and if the country decides, he should get the Bharat Ratna.”

On December 25, 2013, when the BJP celebrated Atalji’s 89th birthday, then party president Rajnath Singh had, seemingly in resignation, said that Vajpayee “does not need a Bharat Ratna as he himself is a ratna (gem) to Bharat.”

But the appropriate time did come when Narendra Modi became the second BJP PM, in 2014. The Bharat Ratna award was bestowed on Atalji in 2015.

That was the story of an award for a Bharat Ratna.

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