Her name is Draupadi Murmu, she is from Orissa, she is 64 years old and at the end of the month she could become the first tribal president. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party is doing everything it can to secure victory in the 2024 elections. Dalits remain marginalized and the BJP has also taken advantage of a recent political crisis.
New Delhi () – The next president of India could be a Dalit woman: on June 22, Draupadi Murmu was chosen as the presidential candidate by the National Democratic Alliance, the coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On July 18, the electoral college will meet, made up of the Parliament and the Legislative Assemblies of the different Indian states, which will decide who will be the successor of Ram Nath Kovind.
Many take for granted the victory of Murmu, who would thus become the first female president of India and the second Dalit (or Adivasi, the indigenous tribal peoples of India) to be nominated for the presidency in the country’s history, while that the candidate chosen by the opposition parties, former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, does not seem to have a chance. During his five-year term, the Indian president performs mainly nominal and representative functions, leaving executive power in the hands of the prime minister.
The daughter and granddaughter of chiefs from Santali villages in Orissa, Murmu, 64, began her career as a teacher and joined the BJP in 1997. After holding various administrative positions, in 2015 she became the first tribal woman to be appointed governor of Jharkhand and to fully serve the term of her term.
The party presents her as a woman of humble origins who has given her life for the community. Her personal life has been marked by tragedy: she Murmu she lost her husband and two children. Her candidacy for the presidency had already been aired in 2017, two years before the 2019 general elections that later confirmed Modi as prime minister.
The next elections for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament, will be held in May 2024. With Murmu as the fifteenth president of the country, the BJP hopes to capitalize on the preferences of the adivasi population and strengthen its electoral base.
Even before Murmu’s nomination became official, the current BJP president, Jagat Prakash Nadda, had announced that his coalition’s candidate would come from eastern India. The BJP has always dominated elections in the western states, while in the eastern states, where adivasis are concentrated, it has generally relied on coalition partners. But now the representatives of the states not aligned with the BJP that are home to a large part of the tribals, it would be difficult for them not to vote for a Dalit candidate. These are states like Orissa (where tribals are 23%), Jharkhand (27%) and Chattisgarh (31%).
The BJP had been repeatedly criticized by the opposition for not giving space in politics to marginalized communities. Despite Murmu’s appointment, The Wire noted that police abuses against Dalits actually continue unabated: in Dhinkia, Orissa, 60 Dalit activists were arrested and then released on bail in the last six months alone. For years, the inhabitants of this region have opposed the operation of a steel plant (now owned by the Jindal company) that threatens the environment and the work of local communities, made up of fishermen and betel leaf growers.
For the opposition, it is clear that the BJP is doing everything possible to prevail in the upcoming elections. In recent weeks there has been a political crisis within the party that governs Maharashtra, Shiv Sena. On June 30, the state’s prime minister, Uddhav Thackeray, resigned. Although BJP representatives said they “have nothing to do with political unrest”, opposition figures say the split within the party has paved the way for the BJP, which is now pulling the strings behind the scenes. Maharashtra’s new Prime Minister, Eknath Shinde, immediately after taking office declared his support and loyalty to the BJP, and his deputy, Devendra Fadnavis, criticized the Shiv Sena’s past decision to ally with the Congress party in against the BJP.
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