Tearful farewell to Bharat Ratna Vajpayee

Foster daughter NamitaKaulBhattacharya lit the pyre as cries of "AtalBihari Amar Rahe" reverberated in the air on drizzling afternoon of August 17 Thursday.  Chief ministers, opposition leaders, chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force, governors and a host of other dignitaries attended the funeral of Vajpayee. Foreign dignitaries, including Bhutanese king JigmeKhesarNamgyelWangchuck, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Pakistan's Law Minister Ali Zafar. Scores of people gathered at the Sthal to pay their respectsto the tall leader, who was cremated with full state honours. President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister NarendraModi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi and former prime ministerManmohan Singh were among the thousands of people at the RashtriyaSmritiSthal on the banks of the Yamuna, the BJP patriarch's final resting place along the stretch which also houses the memorials of Mahatma Gandhi, LalBahadurShastri, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.