BJP Stalwart LK Advani Discharged From Delhi Hospital After Recovering From Chest Infection
NEW DELHI: Senior BJP leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani was discharged from Delhi's Indraprastha Apollo Hospital on Monday after recovering from a chest infection, the hospital said in a statement.
"Mr L.K. Advani, who was admitted to Apollo Hospitals on 16th October with a chest infection, is being discharged today. He has been under the care of Dr Vinit Suri, Senior Consultant – Neurology and has shown improvement in his medical status," the hospital said in a press statement issued on Monday.
The 98-year-old leader had been admitted to the hospital on Friday, October 16, at around 7.30 in the evening with symptoms of a chest infection. He was first treated in the pulmonary department and was later kept in the intensive care unit, where his condition was monitored round the clock and described as stable.
A specialised team of doctors attended to him through his stay.
During his stay, senior leaders called on the veteran leader at the hospital. Union Health Minister JP Nadda met him on Saturday, enquired about his health and spent time with his family. Party leaders said the visit underlined the high regard in which Advani continues to be held across the BJP's leadership.
News of his admission had prompted an outpouring of concern from leaders across party lines over the weekend, with several of them wishing him a speedy recovery on social media. His discharge on Monday brought relief to his well-wishers. Doctors have advised the usual post-discharge care, and the veteran leader is expected to continue his recovery at his residence in the national capital, where his family will oversee the next phase of convalescence.
This latest hospitalisation follows a series of admissions for age-related health issues over the past couple of years. In May this year, Advani was admitted to Apollo Hospital for age-related health complications and was discharged after several days of treatment. Earlier, in December 2024, the veteran leader was treated in the intensive care unit of the same hospital for medical management and investigations under the supervision of a neurologist.
His condition was stated to be stable on that occasion as well.
Just weeks before this hospitalisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Advani at his residence in New Delhi after the Prime Minister completed 25 years as a head of government. Modi, who has served continuously — first as Gujarat's chief minister for three terms and then as India's prime minister after winning three Lok Sabha elections — since October 7, 2001, arrived at the veteran's home and sought his blessings.
"Met Advani Ji at his residence and sought his blessings. His decades of public service and contribution to our national life have left a lasting imprint. He has played a pivotal role in strengthening India's progress," the Prime Minister had said on the micro-blogging site X.
Born on November 8, 1927, in Karachi in undivided India — now in Pakistan — Advani is one of the most consequential figures in the BJP's history. At the age of fourteen, he joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and by 1947 he had become an RSS organiser in Karachi. After Partition, he moved to India and continued his work as a full-time RSS worker in Rajasthan, where he took charge of the organisation's activities.
In 1951, he joined the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the political party founded that year by Syama Prasad Mookerjee, serving as secretary of its Rajasthan unit. Over the next two decades he rose steadily through the ranks of the organisation. He entered Parliament in 1970 as a member of the Rajya Sabha from Delhi, a seat he held until 1989, and in 1973 he was elected president of the Jana Sangh.
During the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975, Advani was arrested along with opposition leaders including his close colleague Atal Bihari Vajpayee. When the Emergency ended, the Jana Sangh merged into the newly formed Janata Party, and after its victory in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections, Advani was appointed Minister of Information and Broadcasting in the Morarji Desai government.
His tenure is widely remembered for the rollback of press censorship and other media curbs imposed during the Emergency, and for reforms aimed at protecting the freedom of the press.
The Janata Party split in 1979 over the dual-membership controversy, and Advani and his colleagues left to form the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980. He went on to serve as the BJP's national president on multiple occasions, holding the post in 1986, from 1993 to 1998 and again from 2004 to 2006 — the longest tenure of any president in the party's history.
Under his leadership the party made Hindutva its core ideology and set about transforming itself from a marginal political force into a major national party.
Perhaps the defining chapter of his political life was the nationwide Ram Rath Yatra of 1990. Setting out from Somnath in Gujarat on September 25, 1990, in a converted Toyota fashioned to resemble a chariot, Advani embarked on a 10,000-kilometre journey through ten states, with Ayodhya as the scheduled destination on October 30.
The procession, aimed at mobilising support for the construction of a Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, drew enormous crowds across the country and became the largest mass mobilisation of the Hindu nationalist movement.
On October 23, however, the yatra was cut short when Advani was arrested at Samastipur in Bihar on the orders of then Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, who cited the communal tension it had caused. The BJP responded by withdrawing its support to the V.P. Singh government at the Centre, which fell within days. The arrest turned Advani into a hero of the movement's supporters and catapulted the BJP into national politics.
In the 1991 general elections that followed, the party's tally rose to 120 Lok Sabha seats, up from just two seats in 1984 and 85 in 1989. The yatra remains one of the most discussed political movements of the post-independence era, and its reverberations shaped Indian politics for decades, culminating in the eventual construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya.
The electoral momentum carried the party forward through the nineties. In the 1996 general elections, the BJP emerged as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha for the first time, winning 161 seats, and Vajpayee formed a government that lasted just thirteen days for want of a majority. Two years later, the party won 182 seats and formed the National Democratic Alliance coalition government, and in 1999 it returned to power with Vajpayee at the helm for a full term.
Through these years, Advani was at the centre of the party's decision-making — first as Home Minister from 1998, and then, in 2002, as Deputy Prime Minister in the Vajpayee government while retaining the home portfolio. In that role he shaped the country's internal security policy in the early 2000s, and he served as Deputy Prime Minister until 2004. He also served as the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha from 1991 to 1993 and again from 2004 to 2009.
In recognition of his contribution to public life, Advani was conferred the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, in 2024 — an acknowledgement of a public career spanning more than seven decades. The award was announced by the government on February 3, 2024.
Even in his late nineties, Advani remains a moral touchstone for the party he helped build. His long journey — from a schoolboy in Karachi who joined the RSS at fourteen, to information minister who undid Emergency-era press controls, to the charioteer of the Ram movement, to Deputy Prime Minister — is often described within the BJP as a bridge between its origins as a fledgling outfit and its present stature in Indian politics.
For now, his family and doctors expect him to rest and recover at home in the coming days. Party leaders have expressed confidence that he will bounce back, as he has on each earlier occasion, and return to the quiet routine of meetings, visitors and reading that has defined his recent years. Until then, his many admirers will be watching for news of his recovery with the same affection they have shown for decades.
(Reporting based on The Times of India and The Telegraph.)