Dr Rajendra Prasad

Rajendra Prasad (3 December 1884 to 28 February 1963) was a Congress leader from Bihar who presided over the Constituent Assembly that framed India's Constitution and then served as the first President of India. For the Panth he matters as the head of the Assembly whose committees turned down the Sikh demand for safeguards, and in which Sardar Hukam Singh refused to sign the Constitution.

Career. Born at Ziradei in the Bengal Presidency (now Siwan district, Bihar), he worked with Gandhi on the Champaran inquiry in 1917. He was Congress president in October 1934, again in 1939 after Subhas Chandra Bose resigned, and a third time from 17 November 1947 after J. B. Kripalani resigned. After the Quit India resolution of 8 August 1942 he was arrested and held until 15 June 1945.

The Sikh question. Prasad was elected President of the Constituent Assembly on 11 December 1946. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records that a sub-committee under Vallabhbhai Patel, appointed on 24 February 1948 to examine safeguards for the Sikhs, did not meet until 23 November 1948 and then rejected their demand for reserved seats in the legislatures, and that the Advisory Committee on 11 May 1949 recommended that statutory reservation of seats for religious minorities be abolished. Prasad is not named in that account. He does appear in the Assembly record: on 25 May 1949 Patel told the Assembly that a five-member sub-committee of the Advisory Committee on the East Punjab and West Bengal question consisted of Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Patel, K. M. Munshi and B. R. Ambedkar, and that the Sikh representatives had asked for time to consider the report and consult their community, so the committee adjourned.

Hukam Singh, elected to the Assembly on 30 April 1948 for the Shiromani Akali Dal, fought for minority rights. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says that, failing to obtain protection for Sikhs as a religious minority, he refused to put his signature to the new constitution.

Key moments

• 11 December 1946: elected President of the Constituent Assembly, an office he held until 24 January 1950.
• 25 May 1949: Patel names Prasad among the members of the sub-committee on East Punjab and West Bengal, and reports the Sikh request for time.
• 26 January 1950: elected the first President of India, at first as interim President; formally elected after the first general elections in 1952 and re-elected in 1957.
• May 1962: retires, having declined requests to continue.

What he is remembered for. He is remembered as the presiding officer of the Constituent Assembly and the Republic's first President, the only one to serve two full terms. In the Panth's record, the Assembly he led finished its work with the Sikh demand for safeguards unmet and with Hukam Singh's signature withheld.