Dr. Rajendra Prasad 3 December 1884 - 28 February 1963) was the first President of the Republic of India.An Indian political leader, lawyer by training, Prasad joined the Indian National Congress during the Indian independence movement and became a major leader from the region of Bihar.
A supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, Prasad was imprisoned by British authorities during the Salt Satyagraha of 1931 and the Quit India movement of 1942. Prasad served one term as President of the Indian National Congress from 1934 to 1935. After the 1946 elections, Prasad served as minister of food and agriculture in the central government. Upon independence in 1947, Prasad was elected president of the Constituent Assembly of India, which prepared the Constitution of India and served as its provisional parliament.
When India became a Republic in 1950, Prasad was elected its first President by the Constituent Assembly. Following the general election of 1951, he was elected President by the electoral college of the first Parliament of India and its state legislatures. As President, Prasad established a tradition of non-partisanship and independence for the office-bearer, and retired from Congress party politics. Although a ceremonial head of state, Prasad encouraged the development of education in India and advised the Nehru government on several occasions. In 1957, Prasad was re-elected to the presidency, becoming the only president to have been in the office twice.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Sarvepalli Radhakrrsnayya About 5 September 1888 - 17 April 1975) was an Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President of India (1952-1962) and the second President of India from 1962 to 1967.

One of India's most distinguished twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy,his academic appointments included the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta (1921-1932) and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at University of Oxford (1936-1952).
His philosophy was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, reinterpreting this tradition for a contemporary understanding.He defended Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism", contributing to the formation of contemporary Hindu identity.He has been influential in shaping the understanding of Hinduism, in both India and the west, and earned a reputation as a bridge-builder between India and the West.
Radhakrishnan was awarded several high awards during his life, including the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, in 1954, and honorary membership of the British Royal Order of Merit in 1963. Radhakrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country". Since 1962, his birthday is celebrated in India as Teachers' Day on 5 September.

Zakir Husain 8 February 1897 - 3 May 1969) was the 3rd President of India, from 13 May 1967 until his death on 3 May 1969. An educationist and intellectual, Husain was the country's first Muslim president. He previously served as Governor of Bihar from 1957 to 1962 and as Vice President of India from 1962 to 1967. Zakir Husain was also co-founder of Jamia Milia Islamia, serving as its Vice Chancellor from 1928. Under Husain, Jamia became closely associated with the Indian freedom movement. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest national honour, in 1963. Husain was born in Hyderabad, Telengana, India, in a Pashtun,family which came to be more closely associated with Qaimganj, Uttar Pradesh, and education and academia.After Husain was born, his family migrated from Hyderabad to Qaimganj, where he grew up. He was the second of seven sons: the elder brother of fellow educationists Yousuf Husain and Mahmud Husain. He was also the uncle of academic Masud Husain and Anwar Husain eminent anchorperson and former Managing Director of Pakistan State Television. His grandson Salman Khurshid, a Congress politician, is the former Foreign Minister of India.
Husain's father, Fida Husain Khan, died when he was ten years old; his mother died in 1911 when he was fourteen. Zakir Husain attended Islamia High School, Etawah, and was then educated at the Anglo-Muhammadan Oriental College, now Aligarh Muslim University, where he was a prominent student leader.He received his doctorate in economics from the University of Berlin in 1926.In 1915, at the age of 18, he married Shah Jahan Begum and had two daughters, Sayeeda Khan and Safia Rahman.

Varahagiri Venkata Giri 10 August 1894 - 23 June 1980), commonly known as V. V. Giri, was the fourth President of the Republic of India from 24 August 1969 to 24 August 1974.

Born in Berhampur, Odisha, Giri completed his education at Berhampur and the University College, Dublin. Expelled from Ireland in 1916, Giri returned to India where he joined the Indian National Congress Party and became active in the trade union movement. He was a founding member of the All India Railwaymen's Federation and twice president of the All India Trade Union Congress. Elected to the Imperial Legislative Assembly in 1934, he became a member of the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1937 and served as Minister for Labour until 1937, a portfolio he held again in 1946.

Appointed India's High Commissioner to Ceylon in 1947, Giri became a Member of Parliament in 1951 and served as Union Minister for Labour under Prime Minister Nehru during 1952-1954. Having served as Governor of the states of Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Mysore between 1957 and 1967, he was elected Vice President of India in 1967. Following the death of President Zakir Hussain, Giri also served as Acting President of India from 3 May 1969 to 20 July 1969. In the Presidential election of 1969, he won as an independent candidate defeating Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, the nominee of the ruling Congress Party.

As President, Giri subordinated the office of the Presidency to the Prime Minister and came to be known as a rubber stamp President. Giri was succeeded by Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed as President in 1974. After the end of his term, Giri was honoured with the Bharat Ratna. Giri died in 1980.

Mohammad Hidayatullah(December 17, 1905 - 18 September 1992) was the eleventh Chief Justice of India serving from February 25, 1968 to December 16, 1970, and the sixth Vice-President of India, serving from 31 August 1979 to 30 August 1984. As the Chief Justice of India, he had also served as the Acting President of India from July 20, 1969 to August 24, 1969.[1] He is regarded as an eminent jurist, scholar,educationist, author and linguist.



Hidayatullah was born in 1905 in the well-known family of Khan Bahadur Hafiz Mohammed Wilayatullah, an upper-class family. His grand father Munshi Kudartullah was advocate in Varanasi.His father was a poet of all-India repute who wrote poems in Urdu and probably it must have been from him that Justice Hidayatullah got his love for language and literature. Wilayatullah was Gold medallist of Aligarh Muslim University in 1897 besting famous mathematician Sir Ziauddin Ahmad, a favourite of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.


He served till 1928 in ICS and from 1929-33 as member of Central Legislative Assembly. Hidaytullah's elder brothers Mohammed Ikramullah (ICS, later Foreign Secretary, Pakistan) and Ahmedullah (ICS, retired as Chairman, Tariff Board) were scholars as well as sportsmen. He on the other hand excelled in Urdu poetry.

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (Assamese:(13 May 1905 - 11 February 1977) was the fifth President of India from 1974 to 1977.
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was born on 13 May 1905, at the Hauz Qazi area of Old Delhi, India. His father, Col. Zalnur Ali Ahmed, was the first Assamese person to have an M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) degree and also the first one from North-East India.His mother was a daughter of the Nawab of Loharu.Ahmed's grandfather, Khaliluddin Ali Ahmed, was from Kacharighat near Golaghat, Assam, and hailed from a well-known Assamese Muslim family.
Ahmed was educated at the Government High School in Gonda district, Uttar Pradesh, and matriculated from the Delhi Government High School. He attended St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge.
He was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple of London and began legal practice in the Lahore High Court in 1928.He was initiated into Freemasonry at Shillong Lodge 61 on 28 August 1948.

Basappa Danappa Jatti(10 September 1912 - 7 June 2002) was the fifth Vice-President of India. He was Acting President of India from 11 February 1977 to 25 July 1977. The soft-spoken Jatti rose from a humble beginning as a Municipality member to India's second-highest office during a five-decade-long chequered political career.
Jatti was born in a Kannadiga Lingayat family at Savalgi in Jamkhandi Taluk of Bagalkot district on 10 September 1912. His father was a humble grocer. He braved family difficulties and completed his education.

After completing his graduation in Law from Rajaram Law College in Kolhapur, he began his legal practice as an advocate for a very short span of time in his home town Jamkhandi.

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (19 May 1913 - 1 June 1996) was the sixth President of India, serving from 1977 to 1982. Beginning a long political career with the Indian National Congress party in the Indian independence movement, he went on to hold several key offices in independent India-as the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, a two-time Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a Union Minister-before becoming the youngest-ever Indian president.

Born in present-day Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh, Reddy completed his schooling at Adayar and joined the Government Arts College at Anantapur. He quit to become an Indian independence activist and was jailed for participating in the Quit India Movement. He was elected to the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1946 as a Congress party representative. Reddy became deputy chief minister of Andhra State in 1953 and the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh in 1956. He was a union cabinet minister under Prime Ministers Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi from 1964 to 1967 and Lok Sabha Speaker from 1967 to 1969. He later retired from active politics but returned in 1975, responding to Jayaprakash Narayan's call for "Total Revolution" against the Indira Gandhi government.
Elected to Parliament in 1977 as a candidate of the Janata Party, Reddy was unanimously elected Speaker of the Sixth Lok Sabha and three months later was elected unopposed as President of India. As President, Reddy worked with Prime Ministers Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Indira Gandhi. Reddy was succeeded by Giani Zail Singh in 1982 and he retired to his farm in Anantapur. He died in 1996 and his samadhi is at Kalahalli near Bangalore. In 2013, the Government of Andhra Pradesh commemorated Reddy's birth centenary.

Gyani Zail Singh 5 May 1916 - 25 December 1994) was the seventh President of India, serving from 1982 to 1987. Prior to his presidency, he was a politician with the Indian National Congress party, and had held several ministerial posts in the Union Cabinet, including that of Home Minister.

His presidency was marked by Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.He died of injuries in 1994 after a car accident.

He was born in Sandhwan, Faridkot district on 5 May 1916 to Kishan Singh. He was a Sikh by religion, was given the title of Gyani, as he was educated and learned about Guru Granth Sahib at Shaheed Sikh Missionary College in Amritsar. However, he did not have formal secular education.

Ramaswamy Venkataraman 4 December 1910 - 27 January 2009 was an Indian lawyer, Indian independence activist and politician who served as a Union minister and as the eighth President of India.
Venkataraman was born in Rajamadam village in Tanjore district, Madras Presidency. He studied law and practised in the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court of India. In his young age, he was an activist of the Indian independence movement and participated in the Quit India Movement. He was appointed member of the Constituent Assembly and the provisional cabinet.

He was elected to Lok Sabha four times and served as Union Finance Minister and Defence Minister. In 1984, he was elected the seventh Vice-President of India and in 1987, he became the 8th President of India and served from 1987 to 1992. He also served as a State minister under K. Kamaraj and M. Bhaktavatsalam.

Shankar Dayal Sharma(19 August 1918 - 26 December 1999) was the ninth President of India, serving from 1992 to 1997. Prior to his presidency, Sharma had been the eighth Vice President of India, serving under R. Venkataraman. He was also Chief Minister (1952-1956) of Bhopal, and Cabinet Minister (1956-1967), holding the portfolios of Education, Law, Public Works, Industry and Commerce, National Resources and Separate Revenue.
He was the President of the Indian National Congress in 1972-1974 and returned to government as Union Minister for Communications from 1974 to 1977.
The International Bar Association presented Sharma with the 'Living Legends of Law Award of Recognition' for his outstanding contribution to the legal profession internationally and for commitment to the rule of law.Sharma was born in Bhopal, then the capital of the princely state of Bhopal.

Kocheril Raman Narayana 27 (October 1920 - 9 November 2005) was the tenth President of India.

Born in Perumthanam, Uzhavoor village, in the princely state of Travancore (present day Kottayam district, Kerala), and after a brief stint with journalism and then studying political science at the London School of Economics with the assistance of a scholarship, Narayanan began his career in India as a member of the Indian Foreign Service in the Nehru administration. He served as ambassador to Japan, United Kingdom, Thailand, Turkey, People's Republic of China and United States of America and was referred to by Nehru as "the best diplomat of the country".He entered politics at Indira Gandhi's request and won three successive general elections to the Lok Sabha and served as a Minister of State in the Union Cabinet under former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Elected as the ninth Vice President in 1992, Narayanan went on to become President in 1997. He was the first - and, so far, only - member of the Dalit community, to hold the post.
Narayanan is regarded as an independent and assertive President who set several precedents and enlarged the scope of the highest constitutional office. He described himself as a "working President" who worked "within the four corners of the Constitution"; something midway between an "executive President" who has direct power and a "rubber-stamp President" who endorses government decisions without question or deliberation. He used his discretionary powers as a President and deviated from convention and precedent in many situations, including - but not limited to - the appointment of the Prime Minister in a hung Parliament, in dismissing a state government and imposing President's rule there at the suggestion of the Union Cabinet, and during the Kargil conflict. He presided over the golden jubilee celebrations of Indian independence and in the country's general election of 1998 became the first Indian President to vote when in office, setting another new precedent.

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam ( born 15 October 1931) is an Indian scientist and administrator who served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. Kalam was born and raised in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, studied physics at the St. Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli, and aerospace engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology, Chennai.

Before his term as President, he worked as an Aerospace engineer with Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).Kalam is popularly known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology.He played a pivotal organizational, technical and political role in India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974.

Kalam was elected the President of India in 2002, defeating Lakshmi Sahgal, was nominated by Bharatiya Janata Party and supported by opposition Indian National Congress, the major political parties of India. He is currently a visiting professor at Indian Institute of Management Shillong, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Management Indore, honorary fellow of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,Chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology Thiruvananthapuram, a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Anna University (Chennai), JSS University (Mysore) and an adjunct/visiting faculty at many other academic and research institutions across India.

Kalam advocated plans to develop India into a developed nation by 2020 in his book India 2020. He has received several prestigious awards, including the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor. Kalam is known for his motivational speeches and interaction with the student community in India.He launched his mission for the youth of the nation in 2011 called the What Can I Give Movement with a central theme to defeat corruption in India.

Pratibha Devisingh Patil (born 19 December 1934) is an Indian politician who served as the 12th President of India from 2007 to 2012; she was the first woman to hold the office. She was sworn in as president on 25 July 2007, succeeding Abdul Kalam, after defeating her rival Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. She retired from the office in July 2012. She was succeeded as president by Pranab Mukherjee. Patil is a member of the Indian National Congress (INC) and was nominated for the presidency by the governing United Progressive Alliance and Indian Left. Pratibha Devisingh Patil is the daughter of Narayan Rao Patil.She was born on 19 December 1934 in the village of Nadgaon, in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra, India. She was educated initially at RR Vidyalaya, Jalgaon and subsequently was awarded a Master's degree in Political Science and Economics by Mooljee Jetha College, Jalgaon (then under Pune University), and then a Bachelor of Law degree by Government Law College, Mumbai. Patil then began to practice law at the Jalgaon District Court, while also taking interest in social issues such as improving the conditions faced by Indian women.Patil married Devisingh Ransingh Shekhawat on 7 July 1965. The couple have a son and a daughter.

Pranab Kumar Mukherjee born 11 December 1935) is the 13th and current President of India, in office since July 2012. In a political career spanning six decades, Mukherjee was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and occupied several ministerial portfolios in the Government of India. Prior to his election as President, Mukherjee was Union Finance Minister from 2009 to 2012, and the Congress party's top troubleshooter.
Mukherjee got his break in politics in 1969 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi helped him get elected to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, on a Congress ticket. Following a meteoric rise, he became one of Indira Gandhi's most trusted lieutenants, and a minister in her cabinet by 1973. During the controversial Internal Emergency of 1975-77, he was accused (like several other Congress leaders) of committing gross excesses. Mukherjee's service in a number of ministerial capacities culminated in his first stint as finance minister in 1982-84. Mukherjee was also Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha from 1980 to 1985.

Mukherjee was sidelined from the Congress during the premiership of Rajiv Gandhi, Indira's son. Mukherjee had viewed himself, and not the inexperienced Rajiv, as the rightful successor to Indira following her assassination in 1984. Mukherjee lost out in the ensuing power struggle. He formed his own party, the Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress, which merged with the Congress in 1989 after reaching a compromise with Rajiv Gandhi. Mukherjee's political career revived when Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao appointed him Planning Commission head in 1991 and foreign minister in 1995. Following this, as elder statesman of the Congress, Mukherjee was the principal architect of Sonia Gandhi's ascension to the party's presidency in 1998.

When the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came into power in 2004, Mukherjee, never a mass leader, won a Lok Sabha (the popularly elected lower house of Parliament) seat for the first time. From then until his resignation in 2012, Mukherjee was practically number-two in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government. He held a number of key cabinet portfolios-Defence (2004-06), External Affairs (2006-09) and Finance (2009-12)-apart from heading several Groups of Ministers (GoMs) and being Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha. After securing the UPA's nomination for the country's presidency, in July 2012 Mukherjee comfortably defeated P. A. Sangma in the race to Rashtrapati Bhavan, winning 70 percent of the electoral-college vote.