India has elected Draupadi Murmu, a woman politician from a tribal community, as its new president.
According to Arab News, 64-year-old Draupadi Murmu, a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party from the eastern state of Odisha, belongs to the Santhal tribe.
This tribe is one of the 700 tribes of India which constitute about nine percent of the country's population of more than 1.4 billion.
The results of the Election Commission show that they have secured a majority of the votes cast by the legislators of both the houses of the Parliament and the Legislative Assemblies of each State of India.
After the Election Commission results, Modi announced the victory of Draupadi Murmu on social media. He wrote on his Twitter account that "Congratulations to Draupadi Murmuji for this achievement."
History was made in India. At a time when one billion and 30 crore Indian citizens are celebrating the elixir of freedom, a daughter of India, who hails from a tribal community in a remote part of eastern India, has been elected as our president.
Draupadi Murmu is the second woman after Pratibha Devi Singh Patil to serve as the President of India.
Ram Nath Kovind's term as President of India ends on July 25.
Opposing Draupadi Murmu was opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha, who was a senior BJP leader before quitting the party in 2018.
Sinha, 84, served as the country's finance minister from 1998 to 2002 and as foreign minister from 2002 to 2004 in the former BJP government.
The Draupadi marmo will boost the BJP's efforts to win over tribal voters in state elections in Gujarat this year and Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh next year.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a Delhi-based writer and analyst who is considered an expert on Hindu nationalist politics, believes that "victory does not necessarily translate into electoral gains."
He told Arab News that Draupadi Murmu's victory is not important for the tribals of the country, it is merely symbolic. This is not a game changer for Modi. He has put the opposition parties in a lot of trouble because the BJP is now able to say, 'You are not supporting a tribal woman,' but beyond that, Modi will not be able to do anything," he said.
"It won't really help them improve," says Mukhopadhyay. We have seen that the condition of the marginalized people has remained the same in the last five years.
