Atal Bihari Vajpayee will be sorely missed, especially if the BJP gets a fractured mandate in the Lok Sabha elections next year or later this year, if the polls are advanced, and the party needs to put together a coalition of big and small partners. A maverick, Vajpayee was the first non-Congress PM to complete a full tenure in office, thanks to his outstanding chemistry with the parties he worked with. He neither hurt his partners nor deviated from his party's ideology. The partners he had roped in had diversified views and clashing ideologies, yet stuck together to run the NDA government successfully.

The country owes him a lot, though it did not return him to office even in the wake of a first-of-its-kind India Shining campaign. He retired from politics subsequently. Serious illnesses finally claimed his life on August 16.