Ram Nath Kovind

Ram Nath Kovind (born 1 October 1945) is an Indian politician and lawyer who served as the 14th president of India from 2017 to 2022.

He is the first person from Uttar Pradesh to serve as President of India.

He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party and also the first person from BJP to become the President of India.

Ram Nath Kovind was born to Maiku Lal and Kalawati in a Dalit family during the British Raj on 1 October 1945, in Paraunkh village in the Kanpur Dehat district of Uttar Pradesh, as the youngest of five brothers and two sisters.

His father Maikulal ran a shop and was also a farmer and a local vaidya.

His mother Kalawati was a homemaker.

Kovind was born in a mud hut, which eventually collapsed.

He was only five when his mother died of burns when their thatched dwelling caught fire.

Kovind later donated the land to the community.

After his elementary school education, he needed to walk each day to Kanpur village, 8 km away, to attend junior school, as nobody in the village had a bicycle.

He holds a bachelor's degree in commerce and an LLB from DAV College (affiliated with Kanpur University).

After graduating in law from DAV College, Kanpur, Kovind went to Delhi to prepare for the civil services examination.

He passed this exam on his third attempt, He scored high enough to work in an allied service rather than in IAS and thus started practising law.

Kovind enrolled as an advocate in 1971 with the bar council of Delhi.

He was Central Government Advocate in the Delhi High Court from 1977 to 1979.

Between 1977 and 1978, he also served as the personal assistant of Prime Minister of India Morarji Desai.

In 1978, he became an advocate-on-record of the Supreme Court of India and served as a standing counsel for the Central Government in the Supreme Court of India from 1980 to 1993.

He joined the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1991.

Before entering politics, he was a lawyer for 16 years and practised in the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India until 1993.

He practised in the Delhi High Court and Supreme Court until 1993.

As an advocate, he provided pro-bono aid to weaker sections of society, women and the poor under the Free Legal Aid Society of New Delhi.

He also served as a Member of Rajya Sabha from 1994 to 2006.

He was elected and became a Rajya Sabha MP from the state of Uttar Pradesh in April 1994.

In 1997, Kovind, joined the protest against certain orders from the central government that had adverse effects on the SC/ST workers.

Later, three amendments were made to the Constitution that revoked the orders, by the NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

He was the president of the BJP Dalit Morcha between 1998 and 2002 and the president of the All-India Koli Samaj.

He also served as the national spokesperson of the party.

He donated his ancestral home in Paraunkh to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

He has also represented India at the UN and addressed the United Nations General Assembly in October 2002.

He served a total of twelve years, two consecutive terms, until March 2006.

As a member of parliament, he served on the Parliamentary Committee for Welfare of Scheduled Castes/Tribes, Home Affairs, Petroleum and Natural Gas, Social Justice and Empowerment, Law and Justice.

He also served as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha House Committee.

During his career as a parliamentarian, under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme, he focused on education in rural areas by helping in the construction of school buildings in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

As a member of parliament, he visited Thailand, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States on study tours.

He has served on the Board of management of Dr. B.R Ambedkar University, Lucknow, and on the Board of Governors of IIM Calcutta.

Soon after joining the BJP, he contested Ghatampur assembly constituency, but lost and later contested Bhognipur in 2007 elections (both in Uttar Pradesh) assembly constituency on the BJP ticket but lost again.

Prior to his presidency, he served as the 26th Governor of Bihar from 2015 to 2017.

On 8 August 2015, President Pranab Mukherjee appointed Kovind as the governor of Bihar.

On 16 August 2015, the acting Chief Justice of Patna High Court, Iqbal Ahmad Ansari, administered the oath to Kovind as the 26th governor of Bihar, in a ceremony at Raj Bhawan in Patna.

Kovind's appointment was criticised by then Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar as it came months before 2015 state Assembly elections and the appointment was made without consulting the state government as recommended by Sarkaria Commission.