Advani, Lal Krishna, 1927–, Indian political leader, b. Karachi, British India (now in Pakistan). A lawyer and a member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), he was the party's president several times (1986–90, 1992–98, 2004–5). Known as a hardliner, he began a campaign in 1990 to build a Hindu temple on the site of a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya, which led (1992) to the mosque's destruction by Hindu militants and to riots that killed more than a thousand. Under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Advani served as home affairs minister (1998–2004) and deputy prime minister (2000–2004). After the party's defeat by the Congress party in 2004, he became opposition leader. Advani was the BJP's candidate for prime minister in 2009, but the BJP lost to a Congress-led coalition; later that year Sushma Swaraj succeeded him as opposition leader. In 2017 he was ordered to stand trial for his alleged role in the Ayodhya mosque razing; he was acquitted in 2020.
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