Sharma, Shankar Dayal (1918-1999), a Congress Party politician and lawyer, was president of India from 1992 to 1997. He had served as vice president since 1987.
Sharma was born on Aug. 19, 1918. He studied and later taught law at the universities of Lucknow in India, Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and Harvard in the United States. From 1950 to 1952, he served as president of the Bhopal State Congress Committee, and in 1952, he became chief minister of the state of Bhopal. In 1956, when Bhopal merged with the state of Madhya Pradesh, he was appointed a cabinet minister for the state. In 1971, Sharma was elected to the Lok Sabha (lower house of the Parliament of India), and from 1974 to 1977, he served as minister of communications. During the 1980’s, he served as governor of Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. He died on Dec. 26, 1999.
