text: Shankar Dayal Sharma (; 19 August 1918 – 26 December 1999) was an Indian lawyer and politician from the state of Madhya Pradesh who served as the ninth president of India, from 1992 to 1997.
  Born in Bhopal, Sharma studied at Agra, Allahabad and Lucknow and received a doctorate in constitutional law from the University of Cambridge and was a bar-at-law from Lincoln's Inn and a Brandeis Fellow at Harvard University. During 1948–49, Sharma was one of the leaders of the movement for the merger of Bhopal State with India, a cause for which he served eight months' imprisonment.
  A member of the Indian National Congress party, Sharma was chief minister (1952–56) of Bhopal State and served as a cabinet minister (1956–1971) in the government of Madhya Pradesh holding several portfolios. Sharma was president of the Bhopal State Congress Committee (1950–52), Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (1966–68) and of the All India Congress Committee (1972–74). He served as Union Minister for Communications (1974–77) under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Twice elected to the Lok Sabha, Sharma served as governor of Andhra Pradesh (1984–85), Punjab (1985–86) and Maharashtra (1986–87) before being elected unopposed as the eighth vice president of India in 1987.