Droupadi Murmu
Droupadi Murmu has been President of India since July 2022, the first person from a Scheduled Tribe to hold the office and the second woman. Born in 1958 in Uparbeda, a village in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, she is a member of the Santal, one of India's largest Adivasi communities, and was the first woman from her village to attend university. She took a degree from Ramadevi Women's College in Bhubaneswar, worked as a junior assistant in the state irrigation and power department, and then taught at a school in Rairangpur, reportedly without pay. She entered politics through the local council, becoming a councillor in 1997 and vice-chairman of Rairangpur. She was elected to the Odisha legislative assembly for the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2000 and 2004, and served as a minister for commerce, transport, fisheries and animal husbandry in the BJP-Biju Janata Dal coalition. From 2015 to 2021 she was Governor of Jharkhand, the first woman to hold that post, where she returned two bills to the assembly — including one amending land tenancy laws affecting tribal holdings — after protests that they weakened Adivasi protections. Her personal life was marked by successive losses: her husband, two sons and her mother and a brother died within a few years, and she has spoken about turning to Brahma Kumaris meditation afterwards. She was elected president in July 2022 with about sixty-four per cent of the electoral college vote, defeating Yashwant Sinha. The office is largely ceremonial in India's parliamentary system, with the president acting on the advice of the council of ministers, though it retains discretion in a hung parliament. She is the youngest person to hold the office and the first born after independence.
- Lived: 1958 CE – ?
- Nationality: Indian
- Roles: President of India (2022-present)
