Mohammad
Hamid Ansari was the Vice
President of India since August 2007. He is the only person to get elected to
this high office for two consecutive terms since Dr S. Radhakrishnan. Besides
being the ex-officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, Shri Ansari is the President
of Indian Council of World Affairs and the Indian Institute of Public
Administration, and Chancellor of the universities of Delhi, Panjab and
Pondicherry. In a diplomatic career of almost four decades, Shri Ansari served
as India’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates; High Commissioner to Australia and Permanent Representative of India
to the United Nations in New York. He was a Visiting Professor at the Centre
for West Asian and African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University and at the
Academy for Third World Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia. He was also Vice
Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University and the Chairman of the National
Commission for Minorities. He is the author of Travelling Through Conflict: Essays on the Politics of West Asia (2008)
and has edited, Iran Today: Twenty Five
Years After The Islamic Revolution (2005).