India’s first chairman from a marginalised ethnical community, Droupadi Murmu, said on Monday after being sworn in that her election was an “ achievement of every poor person in the country ”.
Murmu’s elevation to India’s loftiest indigenous post has been seen as an important gesture of goodwill by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the communities that make up more than eight per cent of its1.4 billion people ahead of a general election due by 2024.
Murmu, a former schoolteacher and state minister from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party( BJP), is the alternate woman to hold the largely conventional part of chairman. She was born into a poor family of the Santhal lineage from the eastern state of Odisha.
Members of congress and of state houses tagged Murmu last week for a five- time term after she was nominated by the BJP.
“ My election is evidence of the fact that the poor in India can have dreams and fulfil them too, ” Murmu, 64, said in a speech in congress after taking the pledge of office.
“ It’s a matter of great satisfaction for me that those who have been deprived for centuries and those who have been denied the benefits of development, those poor, crushed, backwards and tribals are seeing their reflection in me. ”
Modi hailed Murmu’s swearing- in as a “ watershed moment for India, especially for the poor, marginalised and crushed ”.
India’s chairman acts as the supreme commander of the fortified forces but the high minister holds administrative powers.
The chairman can play an important part during political heads, similar as when a general election is inconclusive, by deciding which party is in the stylish position to form a government.
