Pratibha Patil
President of India from 2007 to 2012
Pratibha Devisingh Patil (born 19 December 1934), also known as Pratibha Patil Shekhawat, is an Indian stateswoman and lawyer who served as the president of India from 2007 to 2012. She was the first woman to become the president of India. A member of the Indian National Congress, she also served as the Governor of Rajasthan from 2004 to 2007, and was a member of the Lok Sabha from 1991 to 1996.
Early life
Patil was born on 19 December 1934 in the village of Nadgaon in Jalgaon district, Maharashtra, to a Marathi-speaking family. The ancestor of the family, Ramji Solanki, had come from Tonk in Rajasthan during the Maratha era and was given a jagir in Narnala, which his descendants then shifted to Nadgaon. She was the daughter of Narayanrao Patil, who was a laywer. She was educated initially at R. R. Vidyalaya town and subsequently was awarded a master's degree in Political Science and Economics by Mooljee Jetha College, Jalgaon (then under Poona University), and then a Bachelor of Law degree by Government Law College, Bombay, affiliated to the University of Bombay (now University of 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 has a daughter, Jyoti Rathore and a son, Raosaheb Shekhawat, who is also a politician.
“Pratibha Patil” enters the record as president of India from 2007 to 2012. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pratibha, Patil and President can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q47854. VIAF identifies the subject as 67678223. The Library of Congress control number is n2007211608. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 2007, 2012 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pratibha Patil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.