President Pratibha Patil completes four years in office

NEW DELHI: Marked with new green initiatives, women empowerment programmes and a series of foreign visits to strengthen bilateral ties, Pratibha Patil, the first woman President of the country, on Monday completed four years in office.

Patil, who is in Korea on an official visit, spent a usual day on Monday, holding a meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung Bak and also signed several Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

Later, she offered floral tributes to Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's bust near here on his 150th birth anniversary.

The statue was inaugurated by Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar during her visit here in May this year.

Patil (76) assumed office as the 12th President of India on July 25, 2007. She is the first woman to be elected to the country's highest office.

Before becoming the President, Patil was the Governor of Rajasthan from November 8, 2004 to June 21, 2007.

Patil, a political science and economics post graduate, has worked as a lawyer at the Jalgaon District Court in Maharashtra. She has undertaken a lot of initiatives for the welfare of women and on various environmental issues.

Roshni is one such ISO-certified project which aims at making the grand President's Estate in the national capital a green, energy efficient and zero-waste model township.

In March last year, Patil started a national mission for socio-economic empowerment of women. The ambitious mission is aimed at ensuring holistic development of women in their personal and professional fields.