- 6th Prime Minister of India from March 24, 1977 to July 15 1979.
- At 81, he was the oldest elected Prime Minister of India.
- Great Grandfather of Vishaal Desai.
- First Prime Minister of India to resign from office. He was forced to do so in 1979 after a vote of no confidence led to the collapse of his coalition government.
- First Indian to be conferred with Pakistan's highest civilian honour, the Nishan-e-Imtiyaz. He was bestowed upon with the award in 1988 by the then Pakistani President Ghulam Issaq Khan.
- Before becoming Prime Minister, Desai had served as Chief Minister of erstwhile Bombay State from where he was transferred to the Central Government as Finance Minister under India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru from 1957 to 1960 and furthermore served as India's Finance Minister cum second Deputy Prime Minister under Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi from 1966 to 1970, but resigned as a mark of protest against Indira's nationalization of fourteen Indian private banks without consulting or notifying him.
- Despite owing his ascent to Prime Ministership to fellow independence activist and Gandhian Jayprakash Narayan, Desai despised Narayan to the limit calling him a "confused lot" and did not even attend his funeral in 1979.
- Was the preferred choice of intelligence analysts in both Britain and the United States as Prime Minister of India on the eve of the demise of Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964 and of Lal Bahadur Shastri in January 1966.
- When Lal Bahadur Shastri took over as Prime Minister in June 1964, he set clear his agenda that he would commence easing off of restrictions over industries in India and therefore requested if Desai can return to the cabinet as Finance Minister. However, Desai, holding a grudge against Shastri whom he regarded as unworthy of being the Premier of the country and "stealing" the post from him, refused outright.
- Was accused by controversial journalist Seymour Hersh of being a paid CIA agent.
- At the time of his death in 1995, he was the longest lived former Prime Minister of India, with 16 years post premiership. This record was broken by Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who had a gap of 18 years between the end of his tenure as PM in 1990 and death in 2008. Singh too has been overtaken by HD Deve Gowda who as of 2021 has completed 24 years since his government was dissolved in 1997. Desai continues to hold the record for being the longest lived Prime Minister overall, with his death in 1995 coming at the age of 99.
- Dismantled much of India's external intelligence setup on allegations that agencies like R.A.W. had been used by Indira Gandhi to harass political opposition.
- Whilst known to be highly eloquent and polished in interviews with foreign journalists, Desai was notorious for being extremely foul mouthed domestically in both public and private spaces, particularly in regards to those whom he thought were a threat to his position as the senior most Congressman after Jawaharlal Nehru.
- Quite strangely, unlike most of the cabinet and even the opposition, Desai denied any chances of foul play in Lal Bahadur Shastri's mysterious death in Tashkent, Uzbekistan SSR in January 1966 during the summit between India and Pakistan to discuss the post 1965 War Ceasefire Agreement, stating he fully trusted the autopsy by Russian doctors which concluded Shastri had died of a cardiac arrest.
- Although much honoured as a freedom fighter of the Gandhian mould, Desai got fully engaged in the freedom struggle only after allegations of him being involved in communal riots as the ICS official of Godhra forced him to resign whereas similar serving junior technocrats like Subhash Chandra Bose, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Desai's future rival Jayaprakash Narayan had conscripted into the independence movement much earlier than him.
- Refused Israel's assistance in dismantling Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, citing his pacifist Gandhian beliefs.
- Second Prime Minister to be awarded India's highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna, after the end of his tenure, the first being Rajiv Gandhi whose Prime Ministership ended in 1989 and was bestowed with the awarded posthumously in 1992. Desai was the first to be awarded after leaving office in his lifetime, the second being his External Affairs Minister and 3 time Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who left office in 2004 and was awarded in 2015.
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