A virtual political unknown, her victory is set to be announced this weekend after the opposition conceded defeat in the vote Thursday for the largely ceremonial post of head of state.

The voting followed a savage debate over the past month about her fitness for the job. Analysts have described the presidential campaign as the most vitriolic in India's 60 years of independence.

Patil, a native of the western state of Maharashtra, was championed by ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, who said her election would help the cause of gender equality.

But Indian politics is rarely without controversy. Patil has been buffeted by accusations that she protected her brother in a murder probe and shielded her husband in a suicide scandal.

There have also been charges of nepotism and involvement in a slew of financial scams.

The opposition also issued a booklet entitled: "Does This Tainted Person Deserve to Become the President of India?"

Patil, who has denied all allegations of wrongdoing, also has a tough act to follow in outgoing president Abdul Kalam, whose bid for a second term was rebuffed by Congress.

The silver-haired, shaggy-locked missile scientist was dubbed the "People's President" for his populist style and large following.

Patil, a lawyer who dresses conservatively in a sari pulled over her hair, has been mocked for revealing to a television audience that a dead spiritual guru gave her a "divine premonition of greater responsibility."

"The future president of India speaks to dead people," wrote Tavleen Singh, in a column for the Indian Express newspaper. "This is almost worse than her shady past."

Alongside opposition attacks, the media has been busy digging up skeletons from the bespectacled Patil's past.

One paper unearthed a speech she made in 1975 to the Maharashtra state legislature in which she said the government was considering "compulsory sterilisation" to check a burgeoning birth rate.

India's top news magazine, India Today, put her on its front cover with the headline "Embarrassing Choice." Its editor-in-chief Aroon Purie said the question was not "Pratibha who?" but "Pratibha why?"

"If the courts move against her close relatives in ongoing cases, her position will become untenable," wrote TN Ninan, the publisher of the leading financial daily Business Standard.

In India, presidential candidates and their families are traditionally expected to be free from any scandal.

Even though she has spent nearly a half century in politics, the Rajasthan governor was an obscure figure nationally until Gandhi's nod for her nomination vaulted her to the front-pages.

"This is a very sad thing, a nondescript person with all kinds of strange allegations against her and no attempt to get a person of eminence -- one more institution of democracy gone down the drain," said veteran columnist Prem Shankar Jha.

A long-time supporter of the late prime minister Indira Gandhi and a staunch Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty loyalist, Patil is on friendly terms with Indira's daughter-in-law, Sonia.

"She is basically a hardcore Congress party loyalist, that's why she got the nod," said political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan.

The key question going forward, said analysts, was whether she would be able to resist the pressures of the ruling coalition and act independently.

Under the constitution, the prime minister wields most of the executive power but the president plays a role in forming government at the state and federal levels, which makes the job hotly contested.

"We have to wait and watch but there is very little in her past to inspire confidence," said Rangarajan.