71-year-old Ram Nath Kovind was voted in as India's 14th President on Thursday.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated party-backed candidate Ram Nath Kovind who beat Congress-backed Meira Kumar by winning nearly 66% of the votes cast by an electoral college of MPs and state lawmakers on Monday.
Kovind will be sworn in as India’s president on July 25th.
Although he has been in public life and politics for decades, few people knew about him before his name was floated by India’s ruling party, Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) as a presidential candidate.
Here are the ten must know facts about India’s next president:
- Ram Nath Kovind is India’s second dalit president after KR Narayanan.
- He spent his childhood in a thatched hut in Kanpur, he said during his speech after the results were announced.
- As India’s president, he will now reside at the magnificent 340 bedroom Rashtrapati Bhavan (President’s House) in New Delhi on Raisina Hill.
- He was a lawyer by profession who has practised in the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court for 16 years.
- He joined the BJP in 1991 and was elected as a Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh in 1994. He served as a Rajyasabha member for two consecutive terms for 12 years till March, 2006.
- He was President of the BJP Dalit Morcha between 1998 and 2002 and President of the All-India Koli Samaj. He also served as national spokesperson of BJP.
- He represented India in the United Nations in New York and addressed United Nations General Assembly in October, 2002.
- In August 2015, the President of India appointed Kovind as Governor of Bihar.
- He has served as a member of several parliamentary committees, including the Parliamentary Committee on Welfare of Scheduled Castes/Tribes, Parliamentary Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment, among others.
- Kovind is married to Savita Kovind and have two children, son, Prashant Kumar and a daughter, Swati.
Source: Twitter
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