Ram Nath Kovind

Kovind was born on 1 October 1945 in the village of Paraunkh in Kanpur district, Uttar Pradesh. The President’s Secretariat describes his family as one of modest means. He attended school and college in Kanpur and studied commerce for his bachelor’s degree before taking a law degree at Kanpur University. He married Savita Kovind in May 1974, and the couple have a son and a daughter.

Kovind enrolled as an advocate with the Bar Council of Delhi in 1971. He served as counsel of the Union Government in the Delhi High Court from 1977 to 1979 and became an Advocate-on-Record in the Supreme Court of India in 1978. From 1980 to 1993 he was Standing Counsel for the Union Government in the Supreme Court. Through the Free Legal Aid Society of New Delhi he also gave free legal assistance to weaker sections of society, especially women and the poor.

Kovind was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh with effect from April 1994 and served two consecutive six-year terms until March 2006. He sat on a number of parliamentary committees and addressed the United Nations General Assembly on 22 October 2003 as a member of the Indian delegation. He was a member of the Board of Management of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University in Lucknow and of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata.

Kovind was appointed Governor of Bihar on 8 August 2015. As Chancellor of the state universities, the President’s Secretariat says, he introduced reforms and new technology and sought greater transparency in the appointment of vice-chancellors. He was Governor before he took office as President.

Kovind was sworn in as the fourteenth President of India on 25 July 2017. His term as President ended on 24 July 2022, according to the Press Information Bureau’s New India Samachar, and Droupadi Murmu was sworn in as his successor on 25 July 2022. The President’s Secretariat records that he made state visits to 33 countries up to June 2022 and received the highest state honours from six countries: Madagascar, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Croatia, Bolivia and the Republic of Guinea. In May 2018 he visited troops at Kumar Post in Siachen.