Widely regarded within the Sangh Parivar as a potential successor to Vajpayee in the Prime Minister's chair, the shock results of the recent elections meant that the 77-year-old journalist-turned-politician will lead the opposition in the Lok Sabha against the first ever Congress-headed coalition government.

Advani, a forceful speaker with cold logic, was always a perfect foil to the poetic and persuasive Vajpayee. But his advocacy of the Hindutva issue, symbolised by his famous Yatra politics catapulted him into the centrestage of Indian politics.

He took over as BJP President from Vajpayee in 1986 in the aftermath of the 1984 poll debacle when the party faced its "worst setback" of winning only two seats.

Advani is largely credited with its rise to 88 seats in 1989, 121 seats in 1991, 181 seats in 1996 and finally the saffron party's emergence as the ruling party in 1998.

Born on November 8, 1929 in Karachi, Advani did his schooling at St Patricks. He later graduated in Law from Bombay University.

An active member of the RSS in Karachi, he served the RSS in Rajasthan after partition. He later joined the Jan Sangh and went on to become the Secretary of their Parliamentary Group.

In 1967, he was elected Chairman of the Delhi Metropolitan Council and in 1970, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Member of Parliament. He held the position of Information and Broadcasting Minister in the Janata Party Government in 1980 and was BJP's All India President from 1986 to 1991.

Having been a member of the Rajya Sabha for nearly two decades, he was for the first time elected to the Lok Sabha from the New Delhi constituency in 1989. He was again re-elected from the Gandhinagar and New Delhi constituencies but retained the former seat.