India's first woman president savours victory

NEW DELHI (AFP) - 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 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 Sunday. 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 people of India, the men and women of India," said Patil. She officially takes over on July 25.

Analysts and supporters described her win as a significant step forward for women in a nation where millions of them face violence, discrimination and poverty.

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.

When asked about her vision for the country, Patil said she would like to see India make widespread progress, including in gender equality.

"I think that India should make adequate economic, social and educational progress and immediately," Patil told Indian television.

"The country's poverty and unemployment should be removed and there should be gender equality among men and women in the country," she said, adding she would also like to see India's secular credentials reinforced.