Droupadi Murmu dances with villagers in 2018 when she was Governor
President-elect Droupadi Murmu, who started her political career as a councillor in Odisha, has firmly put her name in history as India's first tribal President and the second woman in the post.
Known as a people's leader during her long political career, she had found many backers along her presidential campaign trail and won an easy victory over the opposition's pick, Yashwant Sinha.
On getting confirmation of her big win yesterday, supporters across states and many residents in tribal belts of Odisha and other states broke into dance performances in celebration.
Many on social media also posted old videos of the President-elect when she was Governor, showing her meeting and talking with people, even performing a traditional dance with them.
A video from 2018, when she was Jharkhand Governor, shows the President-elect leading a traditional dance with a group of women in tow and some men beating drums.
The video is from a time when people from her village in Odisha went to meet her at the Raj Bhavan in Jharkhand. This is how the people in her home district, Mayurbhanj, remember her fondly.
For the villagers, their "Didi" was always one of them, despite the high offices she has held and will hold.
At 64, Droupadi Murmu will be India's 15th president and also the youngest ever, and the first the be born after independence.
The President-elect is believed to be deeply spiritual and a keen practitioner of the meditation techniques of the Brahma Kumaris, a movement she embraced after she lost her husband, two sons, mother and brother in the just six years between 2009-2015.