India on Monday swore in the first-ever president from the country’s indigenous ethnic groups, President Draupadi Murmu.
Murmu, a former teacher who was previously the governor of the Jharkhand region promised to deliver.
Speaking after taking her oath of office, she said “My election is proof that the poor in the country can have dreams and also fulfil them.
“It is a matter of great satisfaction for me that those who have been deprived for centuries and those who have been denied the benefits of development, those poor, downtrodden, backwards and tribals are seeing their reflection in me.”
In India, the president mainly fulfils representative tasks, while the power lies with the prime minister.
Murmu, who belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party BJP, was the second woman to hold the office.
Indigenous people make up some 8.6 per cent of India’s population of around 1.3 billion people and are often poor and marginalised.