Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed ( born May 13, 1905 in Delhi, † 11 February 1977 in New Delhi ) was an Indian politician and President from 1974 to 1977.

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was born as the son of an Army doctor in Assam. After his school education in India, he studied history at Cambridge University and earned his degree in 1927. He returned to India and was elected in 1935 in the Parliament of Assam. As finance minister of Assam in 1938 he was responsible for radical tax measures. In 1939 he was arrested for his political activities for the Indian National Congress and spent up to April 1945 a total of four and a half years in prison.

Ahmed was appointed in 1946 to the Attorney General of Assam and held this office for six years. After a tenure in the Union Parliament, he was again politically active in Assam. In January 1966, he was appointed Indira Gandhi in her first Cabinet. He held several ministerial posts, irrigation and energy, education, industrial development and agriculture. In 1974, he became the fifth President of India. He died in office.