India set for first female president

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Pratibha Patil, a diminutive 72-year-old lawyer, was set to be declared India's first woman president on Saturday after one of the bitterest political campaigns in the nation's post-colonial history.

Early results showed her headed for a comfortable victory as counting continued late Saturday of ballots cast by an electoral college made up of federal and state lawmakers, according to television reports.

Sealed ballot boxes from across the country -- where legislators voted in state capitals -- were brought to the parliament house for counting.

The result, however, had been a foregone conclusion after the opposition said on Thursday that Patil had defeated its candidate, the incumbent 84-year-old Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, for the largely ceremonial job.

A stream of well-wishers thronged Patil's residence in New Delhi and people were dancing in the streets in her home town of Jalgaon in the western state of Maharashtra.

The voting followed a presidential campaign described by analysts as the most vitriolic in India's six decades of independence.

Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling Congress party, plucked Patil from political obscurity, saying her election would boost the cause of gender equality and would be a "historic moment."