Droupadi Murmu elected President
Droupadi Murmu has been elected as the 15th President of India. She was declared the winner after more than 10 hours of counting on Thursday,July 30. The election had taken place on July 18.
She won 64 per cent of the votes polled, the rest 36 per cent going to the joint opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
Droupadi Murmu was also helped by a large amount of cross-voting. Around 125 MLAs and 17 MPs from opposition (that is, non-NDA) parties voted for her, including 25 in Assam, 17 in Maharashtra, 16 in Madhya Pradesh, 10 in Gujarat, six each in Bihar and Chhattisgarh, four in Goa, two in Bengal and one in Kerala.
In his home state of Jharkhand, Sinha got the support of only nine of the 81 MLAs in the assembly. The ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, though a part of the opposition camp, had announced its support for Murmu, being from a tribal community.
She is a Santhal, and the first Adivasi/ tribal to hold the position of the first citizen of India.
