India elects first woman president

NEW DELHI – India’s first female president, Pratibha Patil, savoured her election win yesterday as supporters hailed the victory as a significant step forward for women in the South Asian nation.

The 72-year-old lawyer defeated Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat by a landslide on Saturday for the largely ceremonial post of head of state of the world’s largest democracy. Supporters and workers of the ruling Congress party that backed Patil thronged her house in New Delhi yesterday.Many wore bright turbans and carried flowers to celebrate the occasion.After the results were announced Saturday, supporters danced and burst firecrackers in the streets of the capital, as a beaming Patil thanked federal and state legislators who formed the electorate.”I am grateful to the voters…I am grateful to the people of India, the men and women of India,” said Patil who officially takes over on July 25.Analysts and supporters described her win as a significant step forward for women in a nation where millions face violence, discrimination and poverty.”Patil’s election win is of huge symbolic value” for women, said political analyst Rasheed Kidwai.”Though Patil does not wield much power, she is the first woman head of the state.”Patil, governor of the northwestern state of Rajasthan, was plucked from relative political obscurity by Sonia Gandhi, the powerful president of the ruling Congress party.”In the 60th year of our independence, for the first time, we have a woman president and I want to thank our alliance partners and all those who voted for her,” Gandhi said Saturday.Her party’s Communist allies agreed, adding that she would hopefully help dispel a widespread belief that a woman’s place was in the home.”We are living in a society where still a large body of opinion believes that the place of the woman is in the home,” said Brinda Karat, a politburo member of Communist Party of India (Marxist).”Here you are trying to bring more women into public life and the fact you have a woman as the president of this country is symbolic of that …and the aspirations of women for equality,” Karat said.Patil, a native of western Maharashtra state, secured 66 per cent of the votes cast, said returning officer P D T Achary.Nampa-AFPSupporters and workers of the ruling Congress party that backed Patil thronged her house in New Delhi yesterday.Many wore bright turbans and carried flowers to celebrate the occasion.After the results were announced Saturday, supporters danced and burst firecrackers in the streets of the capital, as a beaming Patil thanked federal and state legislators who formed the electorate.”I am grateful to the voters…I am grateful to the people of India, the men and women of India,” said Patil who officially takes over on July 25.Analysts and supporters described her win as a significant step forward for women in a nation where millions face violence, discrimination and poverty.”Patil’s election win is of huge symbolic value” for women, said political analyst Rasheed Kidwai.”Though Patil does not wield much power, she is the first woman head of the state.”Patil, governor of the northwestern state of Rajasthan, was plucked from relative political obscurity by Sonia Gandhi, the powerful president of the ruling Congress party.”In the 60th year of our independence, for the first time, we have a woman president and I want to thank our alliance partners and all those who voted for her,” Gandhi said Saturday.Her party’s Communist allies agreed, adding that she would hopefully help dispel a widespread belief that a woman’s place was in the home.”We are living in a society where still a large body of opinion believes that the place of the woman is in the home,” said Brinda Karat, a politburo member of Communist Party of India (Marxist).”Here you are trying to bring more women into public life and the fact you have a woman as the president of this country is symbolic of that …and the aspirations of women for equality,” Karat said.Patil, a native of western Maharashtra state, secured 66 per cent of the votes cast, said returning officer P D T Achary.Nampa-AFP