Droupadi Murmu: The First Tribal Woman Prez of India

On July 25, 2022, 64 years old Droupadi Murmu assumed office as India’s first tribal President as well as the second female president after Pratibha Patil.

She belongs to the indigenous schedule tribe community, and thus the nation is looking forward to a better upliftment of the backward tribes with her appointment as the President, succeeding Ram Nath Kovind.

The former governor of Jharkhand, the cabinet member of the government of Odisha, will now serve in the highest position in India for the next five years.

The NDA’s presidential candidate crossed the 50% mark after the third round of counting to emerge victorious in the poll over her rival Yashwant Sinha.

According to PTI, an official announcement on her win is expected after all votes are counted but she has already got 5,77,777 votes, which is more than the halfway mark of the total valid votes cast in the election on July 18.

Political Career

Her political career started to flourish when she joined Bhartiya Janata Party and was elected as Councilor of Rairangpur Nagar Panchayat in 1997.

She was also selected as MLA from the Rairangpur Assembly constituency in the 2000 Odisha Vidhan Sabha election. And also the Minister of Commerce and Transportation of Odisha from 2000 to 2002, during the rule of the coalition government of BJD and BJP in Odisha.

She had also been a minister of Fisheries and Animal Resources Development from 2002 to 2004.

She contested the Lok Sabha election from the Mayurbhanj constituency in 2009 but could not win the majority.

Governor of Jharkhand (2015–2021)

Governor Murmu with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015

Murmu was sworn in as the Governor of Jharkhand on 18 May 2015, becoming the first woman to hold the position. The BJP was in power in the Jharkhand Government for most of her six-year tenure as a governor and was also in power in the Union Government throughout her tenure. She administered the oath of office to Hemant Soren as Chief Minister of Jharkhand in 2019.

Ratan Tirkey, a former BJP politician and activist, said that Murmu had not done enough to make sure that the self-governance rights granted to tribal communities were properly implemented. These rights were granted under the Fifth Schedule and the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 or PESA. Tirkey said, “Despite several requests, the then governor never exercised her powers to implement the Fifth Schedule provisions and Pesa in letter and spirit”.

Her six-year tenure as Governor began in May 2015 and ended in July 2021.

Religion and land bill

In 2017, Droupadi Murmu passed the religion bill. This bill states that if a person is forced into the conversion of a particular religion, the person forcing it will be punished severely by the law. There can be long-term imprisonments accompanied by fines. If the person who is forced into the conversion of religion belongs to a scheduled caste or scheduled tribe, then the punishment increases for the people involved in the forceful conversion. The increase in punishment also results if the person who is forced to change religion is a person belonging to a minority class or is a woman. Generally, the term for imprisonment is three years, but it can also increase to five years in certain cases.

This bill was passed in 2013 by Droupadi Murmu. It stated that the government could not use the lands meant for the tribal population. Even if it does so, a compensation amount must be given by the government for the acquisition of the land within a period of six months.