Pratibha Patil
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Pratibha Patil (Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India 19th December, 1934) India's first female president. She was virtually unknown until recently. Patil is a post-graduate in arts and law. Besides having been president of the Maharashtra Congress chapter, she is credited with establishing hostels for "working women" in Mumbai and New Delhi, an engineering college at Jalgaon for rural youth, a women's cooperative bank also at Jalgaon, and schools for poor children in Maharashtra. Biography
She is married to Devisingh Shekhawat, also a Congress Party politician. The couple have a son and a daughter.
She upset Islamic leaders by asking Indian women to abandon their head scarves.
