Lal Krishna Advani (born 8 November 1927) is an Indian politician and statesman who served as the 7th Deputy Prime Minister of India from 2002 to 2004.

He is one of the co-founders of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist volunteer organization.

In 1951, Advani became a member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh founded by Syama Prasad Mookerjee and performed various roles including in charge of parliamentary affairs, general secretary, and president of the Delhi unit.

Following the Janata party's victory in the elections, Advani became the union minister for Information and Broadcasting and leader of the house in Rajya Sabha.

Following the same, he was one of the chief proponents of the movement to build a temple over the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi site in Ayodhya and the subsequent rise of Hindutva politics in the late 1990s.

[16] Advani became a member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), a political party founded in 1951 by Syama Prasad Mookerjee in collaboration with the RSS.

[21] The government did not complete its five year term and was dissolved to call fresh elections in 1980 where Janata party lost to the Indian National Congress.

[24] Though the previous government lasted briefly from 1977 till 1980 and was marred with factional wars, the period saw a rise in support for the RSS which culminated into the formation of the BJP.

[18] BJP won only two seats in the 1984 election with the Congress winning a landslide on the back of a sympathy wave due to the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

[27] The dispute centered on the basis of the belief that the site was the birthplace of Rama, and that a temple once stood there that had been demolished by the Mughal emperor Babur with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) supporting the claim.

[42] In the 1998 general election, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), came to power with Vajpayee returning as Prime Minister in March 1998.

[44][45] In the 2004 general election, the BJP suffered a defeat with United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress coming to power, with Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister.

[51] At the silver jubilee celebrations of the BJP in Mumbai in December 2005, Advani stepped down as party president and Rajnath Singh, from Uttar Pradesh was elected in his place.

In March 2006, following a bomb blast at a Hindu shrine at Varanasi, Advani undertook a "Bharat Suraksha Yatra" (Sojourn for National Security), to highlight the alleged failure of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in combating terrorism.

[55] On 10 December 2007, the Parliamentary Board of BJP formally announced that L. K. Advani would be its prime ministerial candidate for the general elections due in 2009.

[56] Though Advani won his sixth term in Lok Sabha, the BJP lost to Congress and its allies in the 2009 general elections, allowing then incumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to continue in office.

Later he was part of the Marg Darshak Mandal (vision committee) of the BJP along with Murli Manohar Joshi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.