The presidential candidate of NDA Droupadi Murmu becomes India’s first minority female president defeating her closest rival Yashwant Sinha.
Murmu polled 6,76,803 votes against Sinha’s 3,80,177 votes to become the 15th President of the Asian country.
Murmu, 64, is the first Adivasi and second woman to become the nation’s First Citizen and the Supreme Commander of India’s Armed Forces.
Murmu was elected to two terms in the Odisha Assembly in 2000 and 2004 and served as a Minister from 2000 to 2004 in Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s BJD-BJP coalition government. She was sworn in as the first woman Governor of Jharkhand in 2015.
Meanwhile, opponent Sinha congratulated Murmu for emerging victorious in the election.
She took to Twitter as soon as it was clear that she was going to win the election.
Her Tweet reads: “I join my fellow citizens in congratulating Smt Droupadi Murmu on her victory in the Presidential Election 2022. India hopes that as the 15th President of the Republic she functions as the Custodian of the Constitution without fear or favor,” he wrote.
Murmu will be the country’s second woman president after Pratibha Patil, who held the position for five years from 2007 and succeeds Ram Nath Kovind, the second president from the Dalit community, the bottom of the Hindu caste system.