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Pranab first Bangalee president of India

OUR CORRESPONDENT, New Delhi
India's ruling Congress-led UPA candidate Pranab Mukherjee yesterday won the presidential election by a huge margin, defeating his challenger Purno Agitok Sangma, who was backed by the main opposition BJP and some other parties.
Mukherjee, 76, will be sworn in by the Chief Justice of India as the country's 13th president on Wednesday in the Central Hall ofParliament.
He will be the first Bengali to occupy the top constitutional post and succeed Pratibha Patil, India's first woman head of state.
As the counting of votes in the July 19 presidential elections ended yesterday evening, Mukherjee polled more than half of the electoral college votes comprising members of Parliament and legislative assemblies in the states.
Mukherjee got a vote value of 7,13,763 votes as against Sangma's 3,15,987, out of a total vote value of nearly 11 lakh.
A total of 748 members of parliament voted in the election. Of the total votes, Mukherjee got 527 votes while Sangma 206. Fifteen votes, including that of Samajwadi Party Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, were declared invalid.
Mukherjee secured a huge lead even in the north eastern states where Sangma had used his tribal identity as a main plank during his campaign.
Soon after it was clear that Mukherjee's lead had become unassailable, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his wife Gurcharan Kaur, Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul drove to the former finance minister's residence in central Delhi and felicitated him.
West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress Chief Mamata Banerjee also congratulated him over phone on his victory in the presidential polls.
Banerjee had opposed Mukherjee’s candidacy before finally announcing the support of Trinamool Congress for him just two days before the election.
Reacting to his victory, Mukherjee said, "I express my deep gratitude and thank the people of this great country for conferring this distinction by electing me to this high post.
"I have received much more from the people, parties, Parliament than I have given them... I will try to justify this," he said.
Sangma, at a press conference here yesterday evening, congratulated Mukherjee on his presidential election victory but said the country “has lost a golden opportunity to elevate a tribal to the highest constitutional post”.
He said although the president of India is believed to be above all politics, the process of this year's presidential elections has not been above political bias.
Sangma alleged the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had secured the support of ruling parties in states through financial promises and inducements.
Celebrations broke out at Mukherjee's ancestral house at Mirati village in West Bengal's Birbhum district, Kolkata, and his official residence in New Delhi.
People gathered near Mukherjee's ancestral house watching news of the vote count on TV channels. Some beat drums, carried big cutouts of Mukherjee and danced in joy, distributed sweets, sprayed colours and set off fire crackers.
Mukherjee's election to the president's office marked a new journey for a man who had been out-and-out a politician on the back of experience gained in his 45-year-long innings in government and party.
Till recently the political troubleshooter of the UPA for the last eight years, he is considered an expert in the working of the Constitution and governance and known for adhering to rules.
PROFILE
The veteran Congressman, known for his sharp memory, became a Rajya Sabha member for the first time in 1969. He first held a ministerial office in 1973 at the age of 34 as deputy minister in charge of industrial development.
He has held several key positions in the last four decades except for the first four years of the Rajiv Gandhi period (1984-1987) when he was in virtual wilderness.
He was defence minister (2004-2006), external affairs minister (1995-96 and 2007-2009).
Never a politician with a mass base, Mukherjee was for a long time member of the Rajya Sabha before his first direct election to the Lok Sabha in 2004 from Jangipur in Murshidabad district ofWest Bengal.
He repeated his victory at the 2009 elections but had expressed a desire not to contest elections again in view of his advancing age.
Mukherjee had his own bad days in the Congress which he had to quit in the mid 1980s after he had evinced interest in becoming prime minister following the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October, 1984.
He launched his public life in the 1960s in the Bangla Congress during the time of the late West Bengal chief minister Ajoy Mukherjee of the United Front government when Jyoti Basu was deputy chief minister. He was general secretary of the Bangla Congress.
A post-graduate in political science and history, Mukherjee can recollect any event of historical importance or mundane political and other events, a matter of envy to many of his colleagues.
Son of a senior Congress leader Kinkar Mukherjee from West Bengal, Pranab Mukherjee had a brief stint as a lawyer, teacher and journalist before he came into electoral politics in 1969.
Mukherjee has five books published to his credit on political and economic issues; and under his editorial guidance, the history' of the Congress was published in which there was a candid admission of excesses during the emergency.
He got the best Parliamentarian Award in 1997. Ten years later in 2007, the Padma Vibhushan fol-lewed.