Atal upset on Dec 6, Blue Star operations: Aide

New Delhi, Dec 17 (UNI) A long-time aide of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has confided his boss was upset only on two occasions --December six when the structure in Ayodhya was demolished and launching of Operation Blue Star in the Golden Temple in 1984.

''Atalji personally met Indiraji and advised her to desist from it warning that both she and the country will have to pay for it.

The second time was at what happened at Ayodhya,'' recalled Shiv Kumar about the Operation aimed at flushing out Sikh militants from the Golden Temple, in an interview to BJP mouthpiece Kamal Sandesh.

Delving further into the persona of his mentor, Mr Kumar, political-aide to the former Prime Minister, said, ''he is soft spoken and always at hand to discuss and offer solutions to the problems of the karyakartas. He is literally an Ajat Shatru (meaning a person with no enemies), embracing his enemies as his own.'' '' He is an avid animal lover. One day on returning from Parliament he got to know that the rabbit he had reared had died. He was stunned and almost into tears on coming to know it. He skipped lunch that day.'' Mr Kumar has stayed through the thick-and-thin of the political career of Mr Vajpayee since the inception of Jan Sangh, proving the steadfastness of his allegiance to the man. He became a full-time worker and companion to Mr Vajpayee after the killing of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay in 1968.

Claiming he has no personal expectations, the aide says he has always been at call for the former Prime Minister.

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