Ram Nath Kovind

Ram Nath Kovind
Head shot of Kovind smiling. He is wearing a blue suit jacket.
Official Portrait, 2017
14th President of India
Incumbent
Assumed office 25 July 2017
Prime Minister	Narendra Modi
Vice President	* Mohammad Hamid Ansari (2017) M. Venkaiah Naidu (2017 – present)
Preceded by	Pranab Mukherjee
26th Governor of Bihar
In office 16 August 2015 – 20 June 2017
Chief Minister	Nitish Kumar
Preceded by	Keshari Nath Tripathi
Succeeded by	Keshari Nath Tripathi
Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha
In office 3 April 1994 – 2 April 2006
Preceded by	Subramanian Swamy
Succeeded by	Vinay Katiyar
Constituency	Uttar Pradesh
Personal details
Born	Ram Nath Kovind 1 October 1945(1945-10-01) Paraunkh, United Provinces, British India (present-day Paraunkh, Kanpur Dehat district, Uttar Pradesh, India)
Nationality	Indian
Political party	Bharatiya Janata Party
Other political affiliations	National Democratic Alliance
Spouse(s)	Savita Kovind (m. 1974)
Children	2
Residence	Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi
Alma mater	Kanpur University

Ram Nath Kovind (born 1 October 1945) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current President of India. Prior to his presidency, he served as the 26th governor of Bihar from 2015 to 2017 and as a member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha from 1994 to 2006. 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.

Early life and education

Ram Nath Kovind was born to Maiku Lal and Kalawati 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 ran a shop and was also a farmer and a local vaidya. His mother 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. Kovind was born into the Kori caste, a dalit caste community.

After his elementary school education, he had 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).

Early career

Governor Kovind at a function with Prime Minister Narendra Modi opening a bridge in Bihar, 2016.

Advocate

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, but he did not join because he had only 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 year 1977 to year 1979. Between 1977 & 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 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.

Start of political career

He joined the Bhartiya Janata Party in 1991. He was President of the BJP Dalit Morcha between 1998 and 2002 and President of the All-India Koli Samaj. He also served as national spokesperson of the party. He donated his ancestral home in Paraunkh to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Soon after joining the BJP, he contested for Ghatampur assembly constituency, but lost and later contested for Bhognipur (in 2007) (both in Uttar Pradesh) assembly constituency on the BJP ticket but lost again.

In 1997, Kovind being from Kori family 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.

Rajya Sabha

He was elected and became a Rajya Sabha MP from the state of Uttar Pradesh in April 1994. 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 construction of school buildings in Uttar Pradesh and Uttrakhand. As a member of parliament, he visited Thailand, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States on study tours.^{[citation needed]}

Other appointments

He has served on the Board of management of Dr. B.R Ambedkar University, Lucknow, and as on the Board of Governors of IIM Calcutta. He has also represented India at the UN and addressed the United Nations General Assembly in October 2002.

Governor of Bihar (2015 - 2017)

On 8 August 2015, the President Mukherjee appointed Kovind as 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. The function took place at Raj Bhawan, Patna.

Governor Ram Nath Kovind of Bihar welcoming President Pranab Mukherjee at Patna on 17 April 2017

Kovind's appointment was criticised by then Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar as it came months before State Assembly elections and the appointment was made without consulting State Government as recommended by Sarkaria Commission. However, Kovind's term as governor was praised for constituting a judicial commission to investigate irregularities in promotion of undeserving teachers, mismanagement of funds and appointment of undeserving candidates in universities. In June 2017, when Kovind was announced as 2017 Indian presidential election#Candidates|candidate for presidential election, Nitish Kumar backed Kovind's choice and praised Kovind as being unbiased and working closely with the State Government during his Governorship.

Presidency (2017 - present)

Main article: Presidency of Ram Nath Kovind

2017 presidential campaign

Main article: 2017 Indian presidential election

After nomination for the post of 14th president of India, he resigned from his post as Governor of Bihar, and President of India Pranab Mukherjee accepted his resignation on 20 June 2017. He won election on 20 July 2017.

Kovind received 65.65% of the valid votes, against former Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Meira Kumar, the presidential candidate of the Opposition who received 34.35%. Kovind received 2,930 votes (From MPs and MLAs) amounting to Electoral College votes of 702,044 (65.65%) as compared to 1,844 votes with a value of 367,314 (34.35%) votes for Meira Kumar lagging far behind with 367,314 votes, and 77 votes were invalid. He became only the second Dalit representative to become president after K. R. Narayanan, and also is the first BJP candidate with RSS background to be elected to the post. The tally of votes (367,314) polled by Meira Kumar is only the second highest for a losing candidate, that of Neelam Sanjiva Reddy in the 1969 presidential elections being the highest ever; he received 405,427 votes as against 420,077 by V. V. Giri, the winner.

President Kovind with Chief Minister of Odisha Naveen Patnaik at Biju Patnaik International Airport

Kovind took the oath as the 14th president of India on 25 July 2017.

J. S. Khelar, Chief Justice of India, administering the oath of the office of the President-elect Kovind, at a swearing-in ceremony in the central hall of Parliament, in New Delhi at 2017.

President Ram Nath Kovind with Dipak Misra after administering his oath as the Chief Justice of India on 28 August 2017

President Kovind meeting the President of Nepal, Bidya Devi Bhandari, in Tokyo, Japan on 22 October 2019

List of international trips as president

Kovind made trips to 19 different countries, each for state visit.

Year	Country	Areas Visited	Date(s)	References
2017	Djibouti	Djibouti City	3–4 October
	Ethiopia	Addis Ababa	5–6 October
2018	Mauritius	Port Louis	11–14 March
	Madagascar	Antananarivo	14–15 March
	Equatorial Guinea	Malabo	7–9 April
	Eswatini	Mbabane	9–10 April
	Zambia	Lusaka	10–12 April
	Greece	Athens	16–19 June
	Suriname	Paramaribo	19–21 June
	Cuba	Havana	21–23 June
	Cyprus	Nicosia	2–4 September
	Bulgaria	Sofia	4–6 September
	Czech Republic	Prague	6–9 September
	Tajikistan	Dushanbe	7–9 October
	Vietnam	Da Nang, Hanoi	18–21 November
	Australia	Sydney, Melbourne	21–24 November
2019	Croatia	Zagreb, Croatia	25–27 March
	Bolivia	Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia	28–30 March
	Chile	Santiago, Chile	30 March – 1 April

Personal life

President Kovind with his wife First Lady Savita Kovind

Kovind married Savita Kovind on 30 May 1974. They have a son, Prashant Kumar Kovind, and a daughter, Swati Kovind who was an air hostess for Air India.

Controversy

In 2010, he was reported to have said that "Islam and Christianity are alien to the nation" as spokesperson of the BJP. As reported by IANS and published by Hindustan Times, he made this comment in response to the Ranganath Misra Commission which recommended 15 percent reservation for religious and linguistic minorities in government jobs. Although more recently, the issue was raised in the media if whether or not he was misquoted and that he in fact said "Islam and Christianity are alien to the notion (of caste)" as opposed to what was reported as 'nation.'

State honours

Decoration	Country	Date	Note	Ref.
National Order of Madagascar	Madagascar	14 March 2018	The highest civilian honour of Madagascar; in the category of Grand Cross 2nd Class, the highest class that may be bestowed upon foreign dignitaries.
Order of Independence	Equatorial Guinea	8 April 2018	Degree of Collar.
Order of the Lion	Eswatini	9 April 2018	The highest civilian honour of Eswatini
Grand Order of King Tomislav	Croatia	26 March 2019	The highest civilian honour of Croatia
Order of the Condor of the Andes	Bolivia	26 March 2019	Grand Collar, The highest civilian honour of Bolivia.
National Order of Merit	Guinea	3 August 2019	Grand Cross The highest civilian honour of Guinea.

References

|- ! colspan="3" style="border-top: 5px solid #ccccff;" | Political offices

|- style="text-align:center;" |style="width:30%;" rowspan="1"|Preceded by
Keshari Nath Tripathi |width="40%" style="text-align: center;" rowspan="1"|Governor of Bihar
2015–2017 | style="width: 30%; text-align: center;" rowspan="1"| Succeeded by
Keshari Nath Tripathi |- |- style="text-align:center;" |style="width:30%;" rowspan="1"|Preceded by
Pranab Mukherjee |width="40%" style="text-align: center;" rowspan="1"|President of India
2017–present | style="width: 30%; text-align: center;" rowspan="1"|Incumbent |- |}