Droupadi Murmu: The woman set to be India’s first tribal president

Image credit: Jagran Josh

The candidate with the most votes in India’s presidential election on Monday is a tribal leader named Droupadi Murmu.

The 64-year-old former teacher and BJP candidate hail from the state of Odisha (Orissa), where he previously served as a state governor.

She would be a tribal leader holding the presidency for the first time.

The president of India is the head of state but has no executive power.

He or she is chosen by the members of both chambers of parliament, as well as the legislative bodies of the states and union territories ruled by the federal government.

According to analysts, the BJP has enough supporters to guarantee Ms. Murmu’s victory.

She is competing against seasoned politician Yashwant Sinha, who represents the opposition. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Mr. Sinha served as a senior minister in the BJP government headed by the then-prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He is now a vocal opponent of the group and Mr. Modi.

President Ram Nath Kovind’s term as president expires on July 24, so the victor will take his place. The BJP and its partners had 20 individuals on their shortlist.

Ms. Murmu first gained notoriety in 2017 when it was reported that the BJP was considering using her name in that year’s presidential election. At the time, she was the governor of Jharkhand state.

Ms. Murmu, who was born in 1958 in the Mayurbhanj district village of Baidaposi, is a member of the Santhal community, one of India’s major tribal groups.

She attended the Ramadevi Women’s College in the state capital of Bhubaneswar as the daughter of a village council leader.

Ms. Murmu began her studies in a rural school, according to Nigamananda Patnaik, a journalist and activist who has known her since 1980.

When she won a seat on the Rairangpur City Council in the municipal elections in 1997, her political career officially got underway. She was frequently seen standing in the sun while drains were cleaned and garbage was removed, personally supervising the town’s sanitation operations.

She won the Rairangpur seat for the BJP and was twice elected to the state assembly, in 2000 and 2009.

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