fresh DELHI, July 18 Kyodo A.P.J....

fresh DELHI, July 18 Kyodo

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a missile scientist who l India's nuclear trials over three years ago, has been chooseed as India's new president, the country's election commission announced Thursday.

Kalam, 70 won Tuesday's election with 89% of the consecrated by a vows cast by 4,896 national and provincial lawmakers making up a special electoral collage.

He will be sworn in as India's 12th president nearest Thursday, replacing Kocheril R Narayanan, whose five-year name expires next Wednesday.

Kalam's sole rival in the largely one-sided election was Lakshmi Sehgal, a feminist icon nominated by the agency of leftist parties.

Kalam is the first-ever nonpolitician, nonbureaucrat and bachelor president of India, a pillar considered largely ceremonial in nature.

He becomes India's third Muslim president and nothing else months after the Hindu-majority land witnessed one of its worst religious riots in 50 years in the western state of Gujarat. His election also be deriveds at a time when India's relations with its Islamic neighbor and arch antagonist Pakistan is at an all-time low

The well-respected dark horse candidate's clean image had endeared him to in the greatest degree major political parties with his apolitical background turning not at home to be his major asset.

Born into a poor community forward Rameshwaram Island in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where his father fractureed out boats, Kalam sold newspapers as a child to help without his family.

He went in succession to get a degree in aeronautical engineering, yet failed to realize his ambition of making it into the air force.

Instead, he went forward to become a noted scientist, first working at the country's space agency before being entrusted to head India's indigenous missile program in the mid 1980s

Besides his scientific credentials, the long-haired Kalam, renowned for his frugal lifestyle, is also a bard loves nature, plays the vichitra veena, a rare Indian stringed musical instrument, and is as adept at reciting Hindu hallowed scriptures as well as the Koran.

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