BJP Veteran L.K. Advani Admitted to Delhi Apollo Hospital with Chest Infection

Lal Krishna Advani, the 98-year-old former deputy prime minister and senior BJP leader, was admitted to Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in New Delhi on Friday evening, 16 October 2026, after developing a chest infection.

Hospital officials said he arrived around 7.30 pm and was taken to the pulmonary department. A team of doctors is monitoring him. His condition is stable, and tests are underway. The hospital has not released a detailed medical bulletin.

This is the second admission to the same hospital this year. In May 2026, Advani was treated there for age-related complications and discharged after several days. He has been hospitalised multiple times in recent years for similar issues, including stays at Apollo and AIIMS.

The latest admission came nine days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Advani at his residence on 7 October. Modi had sought his blessings on completing 25 years as a head of government, a period that began when Modi became Gujarat chief minister on 7 October 2001. After the meeting Modi publicly noted Advani’s decades of public service.

Political record

Advani was born on 8 November 1927 in Karachi, then part of British India. He joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in 1942 and later helped build the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. After the Emergency, he served as Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting from 1977 to 1979.

He became BJP president in 1986 and held the post again from 1993 to 1998. He led the party as its prime ministerial candidate in the 1989, 1991 and 2009 general elections. From 1998 to 2004 he served as Home Minister and, from 2002, as Deputy Prime Minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

In 1990 he undertook the Ram Rath Yatra from Somnath, a campaign that moved the Ram Temple demand from the periphery of national politics to its centre. He received the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, in March 2024, and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015.

Advani has lived for years at 30 Prithvi Raj Road in New Delhi. His public appearances have become rare as health issues have mounted, yet the BJP leadership continues to treat him as a foundational figure of the party’s rise from the Jana Sangh era through the first National Democratic Alliance government.

Current status and context

Doctors have not issued a formal bulletin beyond confirming that he is under observation and stable. Family members have not released further statements. The hospital has restricted visitors.

At 98, Advani’s repeated admissions reflect the ordinary pressures of advanced age rather than any acute political crisis. The timing, so soon after Modi’s visit, simply places a long political career once again in public view.

The BJP has not yet issued an official statement on the admission. Party workers and senior leaders have privately noted the development, as they have after each of his earlier hospital stays. Advani remains chairman of the BJP Parliamentary Board, a role that carries symbolic weight even as day-to-day decision-making has long shifted elsewhere.

His career spanned the transition from the Jana Sangh to the BJP, the years in opposition after the Emergency, the 1990s temple movement that reshaped northern Indian politics, and the first NDA government that lasted from 1998 to 2004. The current hospitalisation is the latest chapter in a life that began in Karachi before Partition and has run through every major turn in independent India’s political history.

Observers of the BJP note that successive generations of leaders have continued to seek Advani’s counsel on organisational and ideological matters even after he stepped back from active electoral politics. The latest health update does not alter that pattern.