Who Is Droupadi Murmu, NDA’S Candidate For President?

Droupadi Murmu, former governor of Jharkhand, has been announced as the Bhartiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance’s candidate for president of India.

BJP chief JP Nadda said the party’s parliamentary board had considered 20 names and decided to pick a candidate who was from east India, a tribal, and a woman. Murmu has been a BJP leader from Odisha, and a cabinet minister in Naveen Patnaik’s first government between 2000 and 2004.

In the lead-up to the last presidential election in 2017, at a time when Murmu was serving as governor, she was seen as a leading choice among those considered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP leadership. The NDA had gone on to nominate then Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind for the post. Kovind won the election against former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, and his term in office concludes in July.

The NDA’s choice to nominate a former vice-president of its Scheduled Tribes Morcha for president of India in 2022 follows the decision five years earlier to nominate in Kovind, a candidate who had been president of the BJP Dalit Morcha.

In the time since Murmu represented Rairangpur in the Odisha assembly between 2000 and 2009, the BJP has replaced the Indian National Congress as the second most powerful political force in the state after Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal. Gaining traction in Odisha and West Bengal between 2019 and 2021, the BJP has seen its political support in eastern India rise significantly.

When Patnaik decides on whether to direct his party's support in favour of Murmu or not, he faces the choice put before the Shiv Sena in 2007, the year India's first woman president was elected. The Sena, an integral constituent of the NDA at the time, had voted in favour of the Congress-led UPA's nominee Pratibha Patil, because the then Rajasthan governor hailed from Maharashtra. Shortly after Nadda's announcement, Patnaik signaled his support for Murmu's candidacy.

In December 2019, as governor of Jharkhand, Murmu oversaw the transfer of power from the BJP to the government led by Raghubar Das. She administered the oath of office to Hemant Soren who took over as chief minister, with his Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in alliance with the Congress.

If elected, the 64-year-old Murmu will be the first tribal woman to be President of India. As BQ Prime columnist Amitabh Tiwari noted in a past article, nearly half of all Scheduled Tribes voters had voted for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha general election.

Earlier on Tuesday, a 13-party opposition combine named former Union Minister for Finance and External Affairs Yashwant Sinha as its candidate for president.

The electoral college comprising of members of parliament and legislative assemblies will vote on July 18 to elect India’s next head of state. Ballots will be counted on July 21, and the new president will take office on July 25.