Draupadi Murmu: The Inspiring Journey of India’s 15th President

Draupadi Murmu is all set to be the 15th President of India. Murmu, who belongs to a tribal community in Odisha, will be the first Adivasi woman to occupy the country’s top constitutional post. She is also the country’s second female President. Murmu is likely to take oath on July 25 with incumbent President Ram Nath Kovind’s tenure ending on July 24.

Here’s all you need to know about her:

1. Draupadi Murmu was born in 1958, in the district of Mayurbhanj in Odisha. She completed her education at Unit II High School and Rama Devi College, both in Bhubaneswar.
2. She went on to work as a junior assistant in the State Irrigation and Power Department from 1979 to 1983, and then as a teacher at Sri Aurobindo Integral Education Centre at Rairangpur till 1997.
3. She lost both her sons and her husband several years back. She has a daughter Itishri Murmu who works at UCO bank in Odisha. Itishri got married to Ganesh Hembram, who is a rugby player, in 2015. They have a little daughter, as reported by ABP live.
4. Murmu is a keen practitioner of the meditation techniques of the Brahma Kumaris, a movement she embraced after she lost her loved ones. Around 13 years ago Murmu first got connected with the Brahma Kumari Sansthan in Mount Abu in Rajasthan, as reported by IANS.
5. Murmu first joined politics in 1997 when she was elected councilor of the district board in Rairangpur. She would then go on to become a MLA from the same constituency.
6. Murmu served twice as an MLA and once as a minister in the BJD-BJP coalition government in Odisha, before being sworn in as the Governor of Jharkhand on May 18, 2015. Murmu stayed in the post till 2021 before moving to her village in Rairangpur, as reported by ABP live.
7. She was the first woman Governor of the state and the first female tribal leader to serve as a Governor in any Indian state.

Draupadi Murmu becoming the President signifies the true beauty of Indian democracy. Murmu who lives in a small house in Mayurbhanj, Odisha, will now live in the hundreds of acres of Rashtrapati Bhavan. Draupadi Murmu, 64, currently lives in a simple house in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha. This two-storey house has only 6 rooms. And this house is not in any VVIP area. Rather, these houses are in a simple residential area, where most middle-class families and common people live.

How Draupadi Murmu’s election is a big leap for BJP?

Nominating Draupadi Murmu is a calculated master stroke by the BJP. It must be noted that Assembly Elections are to be held in 9 states next year i.e. in the year 2023. Of these, 86.15 in Meghalaya, 86.5 in Nagaland, 31.8 in Tripura, 7 in Karnataka, 30.6 in Chhattisgarh, 21.1 in Madhya Pradesh, 94.4 in Mizoram, 13.5 in Rajasthan and 9.3 percent in Telangana are of the tribal community.