Ms Droupadi Murmu, will become the second woman Supreme Commander of the Indian Armed forces when she takes oath as the 15th President of India on Monday. History will be made when she takes over as the first tribal woman President as the nation is celebrating 75th year of Independence. On Monday the 64 year old President elect will be administered the Presidential oath of office by Chief Justice of India (CJI) NV Ramana at a ceremony which will take place in the Central Hall of Parliament.

She is the former Governor of Jharkhand and she belongs to one of the oldest tribes of India – Santhals.  This tribe is considered to be the largest and in the 1850s, is known for their uprising against British rule in India.

She was born in 1958 to a rice farmer who was a member of Uparbeda’s village council. As a child each day she used to walk almost a kilometer to school and at night she would study by kerosene lamp. She was the first girl from Uparbeda, which is one of the seven revenue villages in Uparbeda Panchayat in Odisha’s backward Mayurbhanj district. She went to Ramadevi Women’s College, which is now the Ramadevi Women’s University located in Bhubaneswar.

From a teacher to President of India

Before entering politics she was a teacher and then joined the local politics and joined the BJP.  President-elect was a teacher at the Sri Aurobindo Integral Education Centre in Rairangpur in Mayurbhanj. She later worked as a junior assistant in the irrigation and power department of the Odisha government.

In 1997 she had won an election to the Rairangpur Nagar Panchayat, and she then served as councilor.  And then she was elected to two terms in the Odisha Assembly in 2000 and 2004. In Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s BJD-BJP coalition government she served as a Minister from 2000 to 2004. As a minister in the state government, she held various portfolios including — Commerce and Transport and Fisheries and Animal Husbandry.  And in her tenure as a transport minister, she was credited with having set up transport offices in all 58 subdivisions of the state.

Later she served as vice-president of the BJP’s Scheduled Tribes Morcha. In 2015, the party had nominated her for governorship of Jharkhand, and she held this office until last year.