In Odisha’s Uparbeda village, celebrations have continued nonstop since Droupadi Murmu was elected for the position of India’s President.

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Murmu, was born in a remote village in Mayurbhanj, an Odisha tribal district.

After graduating with a BA Degree from Rama Devi Women’s University, Bhubaneswar, she worked as an assistant teacher and a clerk in the Odisha state irrigation department. 

In 1981, she married Shyam Charan Murmu, a resident of Paharpur in Mayurbhanj. She left her government job in 1983 to her raise two sons and a daughter.

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Despite leaving her job, Murmu soon began teaching at the Sri Aurobindo Integral Education and Research Centre and between 1994 and 1997, she taught for free.

Khelaram Hansda, a resident of Uparbeda, told Gaon Connection that Droupadi Murmu attended the Government Upgraded Primary School in the village until the seventh grade before continuing her education at the Gope Girls High School in Bhubaneswar. She utilised a scholarship for tribal kids to stay in a hostel there.

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Droupadi Murmu’s parents were farmers, and according to village elder Nathu Ram Hembrom, they could not afford to pay for her higher education.

According to Hembrom of Gaon Connection, “Her teacher, Basudev Behra convinced her uncle, the former finance minister, Kartik Chandra Tudu, to get her admission in college at the Ramadevi Mahavidyalaya in Bhubaneswar,” Her post-graduate studies were hindered by poverty, he claimed.

Murmu began her political career with the BJP in 1997 as a councillor in Rairangpur. She has also served as the president of the BJP Odisha unit’s Scheduled Tribe Morcha. Prior to being elected twice to the Odisha state legislative assembly on BJP tickets, she served as a cabinet minister in Naveen Patnaik’s BJD-BJP coalition government from 2002 to 2004, where she was awarded the best legislative member award.