Campaign for new nomenclature after Patil's election win

Lucknow: A group working for women's rights is to launch a campaign for a new nomenclature for the top constitutional post following Pratibha Patil's election as India's first female president, given the masculine gender of the current Hindi term Rashtrapati.

"How can you address a woman president as Rashtrapati? Considering that a woman will be occupying the nation's top office for the first time, we need to change the nomenclature to either Rashtradhyaksha or Rashtrapramukh - someone has to take a call on that," said Kumkum Tripathi, deputy chief of Mahila Samakhya in Uttar Pradesh.

The non-government organisation had first raised the issue five years ago, when outgoing president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, was fresh in office.

"We did it earlier in 2002 by sending a signature campaign to President Abdul Kalam, who promised to take appropriate steps in that direction. But sadly, nothing happened thereafter," she lamented.

"A delegation under our former head Manju Agarwal also met the president during his 2004 visit to the state capital in Lucknow and he promised to bring the issue before a committee."

Tripathi plans to undertake a fresh signature campaign to renew the battle for a gender-neutral title.

"We will send this to the new president and hope the issue would not gather dust any more," she said.