Short answers, pulled from the story.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian statesman and Hindi poet who served as prime minister of India from 1998 to 2004, and previously for two weeks in 1996. He was a co-founder and senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the first non-Congress prime minister to serve a full term.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born on the 25th of December 1924 in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, and died on the 16th of August 2018 at the age of 93 at AIIMS in Delhi following a kidney infection. A seven-day state mourning was announced across India.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister of India three times: for 16 days in May 1996, from 1998 to 1999, and from 1999 to 2004. His third term followed the BJP-led NDA winning 303 of 543 Lok Sabha seats in the 1999 elections.
In May 1998, under Vajpayee, India conducted five underground nuclear tests in the Pokhran desert in Rajasthan, 24 years after its first test in 1974. Two weeks later Pakistan responded with its own tests, and several nations imposed sanctions that were lifted after six months.
Vajpayee lost the 2004 general election after the BJP won only 138 seats in the 543-seat parliament and the Congress under Sonia Gandhi emerged as the single largest party with 145. Scholars link the defeat more to rural distress and the miscalculated India Shining campaign than to any single event.
Yes, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a noted Hindi poet and writer whose published works include Qaidi Kaviraj Ki Kundaliyan, written during the 1975 to 1977 emergency, and Amar Aag Hai. He described his poetry as a declaration of war, not an exordium to defeat.