India’s new president to enjoy incongruous luxury in country of widespread poverty

Draupadi Murmu has been elected as India’s new president, making her the first tribal politician and the second woman to occupy the largely ceremonial role.

The 64-year-old, from the ancient Santhal community, was elected on Thursday following voting earlier this week by MPs and state legislators. She will take the oath of office on Monday after incumbent Ram Nath Kovind’s term ends and will hold the position for five years.

Ms Murmu, backed by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, is a former schoolteacher, state legislator and provincial governor from eastern Odisha state. She convincingly defeated Yashwant Sinha, the opposition presidential candidate.

Once she is sworn into office she will move into the imposing 340-room red sandstone Rashtrapati Bhawan, or presidential palace, designed by British architect Edwin Lutyens as the viceroy’s official residence, which was completed in 1929.

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Spread over 133 hectares (330 acres) atop a small hill in the heart of New Delhi, this vast estate is akin to a mini-township, with a private golf course, polo ground, tennis courts, a hospital and a school for the children of the over 625-strong household staff.

It has a large museum packed with exotic paintings and precious rare objects, a 13-acre Mughal-style garden, a bakery, cinema hall, an elaborate swimming pool-cum-squash court complex and a string of grand colonial houses for the president’s vast entourage.

At least 25 chefs are employed by the estate, two of whom are dedicated to catering to the president’s culinary preferences, while the remainder are assigned to cook for frequent state banquets and visiting domestic and overseas delegations.

According to officials, the annual salary bill for the estate’s support staff is a staggering €8.3 million, while an additional €37,000 is allocated to the upkeep of the Mughal garden, which is thrown open to the public for two months every winter. The estate’s yearly laundry bill is about €24,000.

The president also has a fleet of 12 imported luxury cars, including an armoured Mercedes for personal travel, costing upwards of €1.2 million, in addition to a horse-mounted ceremonial bodyguard. These bodyguard horses are well cosseted, being dispatched for “summering” to a specially designated equine estate in the northern Himalayan foothills, to escape the capital’s searing temperatures during the hot weather.

The president also has a “summer residence” in Shimla, the former imperial capital in the Himalayas, north of Delhi, and another estate in Hyderabad in southern India, all of which collectively cost vast sums to maintain for rare presidential stays.

“The trappings of the Indian president were ironically akin to those of former British viceroys,” said a senior opposition MP. Such luxuries are highly incongruous in a country that is home to a third of the world’s poorest and for whom social and economic security is not even a mirage, he added, declining to be named.