Yashwant Sinha: Born in 1937, Yashwant Sinha attended school and university in Patna.
Yashwant Sinha, a former Union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet, was on Tuesday named the joint candidate of the opposition parties for presidential election. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is yet to announce its pick for the July 18 polls.
In a joint statement, leaders of the opposition parties appealed to the BJP and its allies to support Mr Sinha "so we can have a worthy 'Rashtrapati' elected unopposed".
Born on November 6, 1937, Mr Sinha attended school and university in Patna. In 1958, he completed his Masters in Political Science from Patna University and taught Political Science at his alma-mater from 1958 to 1960.
In 1960, he joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and held several posts during his 24-year tenure.
Mr Sinha eventually resigned from the IAS in 1984 and joined active politics as a member of the Janata Party. He was appointed its All-India General Secretary in 1986 and elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1988.
When the Janata Dal was formed under the leadership of VP Singh, Mr Sinha was appointed its General Secretary. He worked as Minister of Finance for the first time from November 1990 to June 1991 in the cabinet of Chandra Shekhar, who split the Janata Dal and formed Samajwadi Janata Party.
Mr Sinha became the national spokesperson of the BJP in June 1996 and was again made the Finance Minister in March 1998 by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
He used to fight Lok Sabha elections from Hazaribagh, his parliamentary constituency in Jharkhand. However, in 2014, he was denied a ticket from Hazaribagh by the BJP, which fielded his eldest son Jayant from there.
Mr Sinha announced his retirement from active politics at a function in Patna in 2018. But in 2021, just before the West Bengal Assembly elections, he joined Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and became its vice-president. On Tuesday, he quit the party, stating that time has come for him to work for greater Opposition unity.
Mr Sinha is married to Nilima and has two sons and a daughter.