Pratibha Patil, India's first woman president

Jul 21, 2007, 12:58 GMT

A file picture dated 16 June 2007 shows Pratibha Patil waving to journalists in New Delhi, India. Pratibha Patil, 72, was elected president of India on 21 July 2007 to become the first woman to hold the post in her country. Patil, nominee of the ruling United Progressive Alliance, won with about double the votes of opposition National Democratic Alliance rival Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, 84, PTI news agency reported. EPA/STR

New Delhi - Demure, saree-clad Pratibha Patil, 72, elected India's first woman president Saturday, was virtually unknown until recently, but she has a wealth of political and administrative experience garnered over a long career.

A lawyer from the small town of Jalgaon in India's western Maharashtra state, Patil is a member of the Congress Party.

She has held several important ministerial portfolios in the Maharashtra government over a decade from 1978. These included public health, education, tourism, housing and urban development, social welfare and cultural affairs.

Patil won her first election to the Maharashtra legislative assembly in 1962, at the young age of 28, and has won all the elections she has contested since.

She has been a member of parliament and was deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house, for a year in 1986-87.

After her last tenure as a lawmaker in parliament ended in 1996, Patil went into the political wilderness till she was made governor of northern Rajasthan state in 2004.

Patil was handpicked for the post by Sonia Gandhi, Congress Party president and chairperson of India's ruling alliance.

Both the posts of governor and now of president, say analysts, are rewards for Patil's unwavering loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Patil was a staunch supporter of former prime minister Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi's mother-in-law and daughter of India's first premier Jawaharlal Nehru.

Sonia Gandhi's husband, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had a hand in making Patil chief of the party's Maharashtra state unit from 1988 to 1990.

Sonia Gandhi described the choice of Patil by the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) as a historic moment which would give the country its first woman president. Congress Party leaders acknowledge off the record that Patil was Gandhi's personal choice.

The Congress Party has stood by Patil through a month-long muckraking campaign during which she was accused of nepotism, financial malpractices, of shielding her brother in a murder probe and her husband in a suicide scandal.

Investors were allegedly left in the lurch when cooperative banks started by her for rural women folded due to bankruptcy or were liquidated by authorities for malpractice.

The Congress Party has said that Patil was not directly involved in the lapses of these institutions or in alleged crimes by individuals.

Patil, who always has her saree pulled over her head in the way of conservative married Indian women, has said she is aware of the responsibilities attached to India's top job. 'There have been attempts to tarnish my image. But I will do my duty rightfully if elected,' she said at a meeting with legislators last week.

In a much criticized remark, Patil said in the run-up to the campaign that the spirit of a dead guru had told her she would occupy a position of great responsibility.

Patil has degrees in arts and law, which she practised for a few years before turning full-time politician. Her father was also a lawyer in Jalgaon.

She was a keen sportswoman in her youth and was a table tennis champion. She once won a beauty contest.

She is married to Devisingh Shekhawat, also a Congress Party politician. The couple have a son and a daughter.

Patil is scheduled to be sworn in as India's 13th president on Wednesday.