Ram Nath Kovind becomes 14th president, defeats Meira Kumar

National Democratic Alliance (NDA) nominee Ram Nath Kovind registered a comfortable win by defeating UPA nominee Meira Kumar to become the 14th President of India.

Kovind bagged 65.65% votes to win the presidential race.

Kovind won the election by a margin of 3,34,730 votes, with the Opposition's nominee Meira Kumar having beem limited to 3,67,314 votes.

The presidential election on July 17 saw close to 100 percent polling. A total of 771 members of Parliament and 4,109 legislators were eligible to cast votes.

The two nominees are from the Dalit community and had canvassed hard by visiting states to seek support of legislators.

A lawyer by profession, Kovind has worked extensively in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Kovind has been the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) Scheduled Caste Morcha chief (1998-2002) and the President of the All-India Koli Samaj. He also served as the national spokesperson of the party. The saffron party had even tired to project him as an alternative to Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh.

Kovind was enrolled as an advocate in 1971 with the Bar Council of Delhi. He became the Advocate-on-Record of the Supreme Court in 1978 and practised in Delhi High Court and Supreme Court for about 16 years till 1993.

He was appointed as the Governor of Bihar on August 8, 2015. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh during the two terms of 1994-2000 and 2000-2006.

Kovind served as member of the board of management of the BR Ambedkar University, Lucknow. He also served as member of board of governors of Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata.

Kovind also represented India in United Nations (New York) and addressed the UN General Assembly in October, 2002. (ANI)

-With ANI inputs.