Even as the India celebrates the appointment of its 14th President, and only the second one from the Dalit community, the residents of Uttar Pradesh's Paraunkh village have even more reason to rejoice.
Hours before Ram Nath Kovind was sworn in as the President of the country, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced several developmental plans for Kovind's ancestral village, reports DNA.
The village will soon have a primary health centre, 700 new toilets, re-boring of 15 dried-up hand-pumps, a dozen transformers and 50 electricity poles, and four anganwadis to take care of pregnant women.
In addition to this, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has also proposed digitising four government elementary schools in the village with solar-powered computers and projectors.
Meanwhile, projects already in the pipeline will be taken up on a 'priority basis', according to the report.
It is little wonder then that the residents of Kovind's village have been celebrating his victory for the past week. On the day of the announcement of his win, they were seen greeting one another, distributing sweets and celebrating with 'gulal'.
Kovind defeated his United Progressive Alliance (UPA) rival, Meira Kumar, by securing a total of 2,930 votes carrying a value of 7,02,044, while the former Lok Sabha Speaker could bag only 1,844 votes with a value of 3,67,314.
Kovind's sister-in-law told reporters she is expecting the President to visit his village soon. "We don't know when he will arrive here, but soon after completing the formalities of the president's house, he should come here."
Kovind, 71, has served two consecutive terms as a Rajya Sabha member, in 1994 and 2000. He served as BJP's national spokesperson between 2010 and 2012 and was appointed as the Governor of Bihar in 2015.
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