Draupadi Murmu makes history by becoming the 15th President of India. She is the second woman President of India and the first President from a tribal community. She defeated Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
Sixty-four years old, Draupadi Murmu is an Indian politician and member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Murmu was born in Mayurbhanj, Odisha, on June 20, 1958. Biranchi Narayan Tudu, her father, was a farmer in the district’s Baldaposi village. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Ramadevi Women’s College in Bhubaneswar.
Murmu began working as an honorary assistant professor at the Shri Aurobindo Integral Education and Research Institute in Rairangpur. She was afterwards appointed as a junior assistant in Odisha’s irrigation department.
Her political career began in 1997 when she joined the BJP. The following year, she was elected as a councillor in Odisha’s Rairangpur district, a seat reserved for tribals. She was also the BJP’s Scheduled Tribes Morcha vice-president.
Murmu was elected to the Rairangpur assembly constituency in 2000. She was appointed to the Department of Transport and Commerce by the then-Biju Janata Dal government in Odisha, which was in power with the support of the BJP. She was the minister of transportation and trade until 2002.
She was given the portfolio of Fisheries and Animal Husbandry in 2002. The same year, she was elected as the BJP district president for Mayurbhanj. Murmu remained the Fisheries and Animal Husbandry Minister until 2004 and the BJP’s Mayurbhanj district president until 2009. The Odisha Legislative Assembly honoured her as the best MLA of the year.
She was re-elected to the Rairangpur constituency in 2009, and in 2010, she was nominated again as BJP district president for Mayurbhanj. Murmu was appointed district president for the third time in 2013.
Murmu was appointed as the Governor of Jharkhand in 2015. She was the state’s first tribal governor. When former President Pranab Mukherjee was due to leave the Rashtrapati Bhavan in 2017, she was considered the presidential candidate. The NDA, however, later chose current President Ram Nath Kovind.
Murmu will now be on the way to becoming President after Ram Nath Govind’s presidential term ends this year. Murmu is the first Indian President from a tribal community, the first Indian President from Odisha, and the first President of India born after independence if elected. She would also be the second woman in the country to hold the highest office.
