India will officially witness their 15th President of the nation. On July 21 (today) NDA candidate Draupadi Murmu was officially elected as the next President of India. Current president Shri Ram Nath Kovind’s tenure will be ending on July 24 and Draupadi Murmu will be swearing in on July 25th. She now becomes the first tribal and the second woman to hold the highest office.
Draupadi Murmu was born on June 20, 1958, to Biranchi Narayan Tudu and a Santali tribal family in the Uparbeda village of the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha. Under the Panchayati Raj Systems, her father and grandfather were in charge of their own villages. Banker Shyam Charan Murmu, whom Draupadi Murmu wed, passed away in 2014. The couple had a daughter named Itishri Murmu and two sons, both of whom died.
Draupadi Murmu began her career as a teacher before transitioning into state politics. Murmu held positions as a Junior Assistant in the Government of Odisha’s Irrigation Department and as an Assistant Professor at the Shri Aurobindo Integral Education and Research Institute in Rairangpur.
In 1997, Draupadi Murmu joined the BJP and won a position as a councillor for the Rairangpur Nagar Panchayat. She was the National Vice-President of the BJP Scheduled Tribes Morcha in 2000, and she also assumed the position of Chairperson of Rairangpur Nagar Panchayat.
On May 18, 2015, Draupadi Murmu took the oath of office to become the first female governor of Jharkhand. She was selected as the Indian State’s first female governor and is a tribal leader from Odisha.
When Draupadi Murmu was the governor of Jharkhand in 2017, she declined to sign a measure that sought to change the Chhotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908 and the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act of 1949.
Draupadi Murmu was chosen by the BJP in June 2022 to represent the National Democratic Alliance in the 2022 Indian presidential election. As part of the Presidential Campaign 2022, she travelled to different states to lobby BJP lawmakers and representatives from other opposition parties to support her candidacy.