India has elected the country’s first woman president after one of the bitterest political campaigns in the nation’s history.
A lawyer by training, the 72-year-old Patil was a relative unknown on the national stage whose candidacy seemed to spring from nowhere.
“It is a special moment for us women, and men of course, in our country because for the first time we have a woman being elected president of India,” said Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, who hand-picked Patil and was one of the first to congratulate her.