Droupadi Murmu takes oath as the 15th President of India
By The Space
By Apekshita Sonowal
Droupadi Murmu takes oath as the 15th President of India defeating opposition candidate, Yashwant Sinha in the president polls on July 22. She won by a comfortable margin and went on to become the first tribal woman and the youngest President of India. The whole country celebrates the iconic victory of Droupadi Murmu today, who is also the second woman president of India after Pratibha Patil and the first President to be born after Independence.
The results for presidential election were declared on Thursday with Murmu bagging 2,824 votes against her opponent Yashwant Sinha who bagged only 1,877 votes. A total of 4,809 MPs and MLAs cast their votes in the poll held on July 18.
After the declaration of results, Secretary General of Rajya Sabha and the Returning Officer for Presidential Election 2022, PC Mody handed over the certificate to President-elect Droupadi Murmu at her residence in the national capital.
The oath taking ceremony was held at the central hall of the Parliament and in the presence of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, who administered the oath of the office on July 25, 2022.
In first address of the oath taking ceremony, Murmu said, “While standing in the Parliament - the symbol of expectations, aspirations and rights of all Indians - I humbly express my gratitude to all of you. Your trust and support will be a major strength for me to carry out this new responsibility." She also said that, “I am fortunate to have got this opportunity to serve during the 75th year of independence." She further said that her nomination was an evidence that the poor in India can not only dream but also fulfill those dreams. “It is the power of India's democracy that a girl born in a poor tribal home could reach the topmost constitutional post,” she added.
According to PTI, the current President's name Droupadi was given by her school teacher which is based on a character of the Indian epic ‘Mahabharata'. Hailing from the district of Mayurbhanj in Odisha, Murmu was born in 1958 and belongs to the Santhal tribe from Odisha. She did her schooling at the Unit II High School and graduated in Arts from the Rama Devi Women’s College (now University), Bhubaneswar.
Before stepping into politics, Murmu served as a junior assistant in the State Irrigation and Power Department from 1979 to 1983, and later went on to became a professor at Sri Aurobindo Integral Education Centre at Rairangpur till 1997. The period when Murmu got interested in politics and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the very same year, she was elected to the Rairangpur Corporation and went to become the Vice-Chairperson of the Scheduled Tribes Morcha.
In 2000, Ms. Murmu won her first Assembly election and was elected as a legislator from Rairangpur while the BJP was in an alliance with the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal from 2000 to 2004. In the same year, she held the ministerial post, first in the department of Transport and Commerce and then for Fisheries and Animal Husbandry.
Being a first time MLA, she was given an independent charge, a rare responsibility for newcomers. And even when the coalition between the BJP and the BJD ended, Murmu continued to work for her constituency, Rairangpur, and regardless, a Naveen Patnaik wave in 2009, she managed to hold on to her post.
But with happiness or success comes ups and downs in life. And in case of Murmu was the loss of her children and then her husband. At first, she lost her 25-year-old son, which caused her to fall into great depression and mental breakdown in 2009. But yet she didn’t give up and went to become as the district chief of Mayubhanj (west) unit of BJP in 2010. She then was re-elected to this post in 2013, and was also named as a member of BJP’s national executive (ST Morcha), this was the same year, she lost her second son. In 2014, came another breakdown in her life, she lost her husband, Shyam Charan Murmu, a bank official, leaving behind her daughter, Itishree Murmu.
In 2015, Ms. Murmu was appointed as the first woman Governor of Jharkhand. Although there were frequent changes of government and MLAs. Ms. Murmu, however, became the first Governor to complete a full term and then served an extra year before exiting the office in 2021.
The newly appointed president has been also been honoured with the Odisha’s ‘Nilakantha Award’ for best MLA in the year 2007 by the Odisha legislative assembly.
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