AHMED, FAKHRUDDIN ALI

(b. May 13, 1905, Delhi; d. Feb. 11, 1977, New Delhi), statesman and fifth president of India from 1974 to 1977.  

The son of an army doctor from Assam, Ahmed was initially educated in India and then went on to graduate in law from Cambridge University in 1927. After returning to India, he joined the Indian National Congress in 1931. He was elected to the Assam legislature in 1935. As Assam's minister of finance and revenue in 1938, he was responsible for some radical taxation measures. On the out-break of World War II in 1939, the Congress Party had a confrontation with British power, and Ahmed was jailed for a year. Soon after release he was again imprisoned for another three and a half years, being released in April 1945.

Ahmed was appointed advocate general of Assam in 1946 and held the post for six years. After a term in Parliament, he returned to Assam politics until Prime Minister Indira Gandhi included him in her first cabinet in January 1966. He held a variety of portfolios: irrigation and power, education, industrial development, and agriculture.

  Ahmed became India's fifth president in 1974. In June 1975, on the advice of the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, he exercised the powers conferred on him by Article 352 of the Constitution and declared a state of emergency on grounds of internal threats to the nation's security.