Lucknow, Aug 16 (IANS): Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday announced that a statue of late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will be unveiled here on December 25.

Adityanath made the announcement at a function here where he also paid tributes to the former leader on his first death anniversary.

He said that the 25-feet-tall statue would be installed at the Lok Bhawan on Vajpayee's birth anniversary on December 25.

Addressing a function, Adityanath said that Vajpayee pursued the politics of values for more than six decades and has remained an inspiration for millions of people.

"Whenever the need arose, he did not hesitate to take tough decisions in national interest. He was a sensitive poet and expressed his feelings through poetry," the Chief Minister said, adding that Vajpayee's oratory skills won him admiration even from opposition leaders.

Several senior Cabinet Ministers also paid tributes to Vajpayee at the function and said that he was a parliamentarian par excellence.

Vajpayee, a senior BJP leader and one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), died on this day in 2018 at the AIIMS in the national capital after prolonged illness.