In what can be said to be a historical moment for the Indian National Congress, senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge has been elected as the President of the Indian National Congress, becoming the first member outside the Gandhi family to helm the party, in 24 years. When the results of the Congress presidential polls were announced on October 19, Wednesday, 80-year-old Kharge, who is a 9-time MLA from Karnataka’s Gulbarga, emerged victorious, by securing a margin of 6,285 votes over Shashi Tharoor, MP from Thiruvananthapuram. While Kharge received 7,897 votes, Tharoor got 1,072 votes.
Kharge is the 10th Congress party chief from South India. The party did not have a President from south India for more than a quarter century. Earlier this week, on Monday, more than 9,500 Congress delegates across the country had cast their votes to elect the party president. The delegates, composed of members of the Pradesh Congress Committees (PCCs) of each state as well as a certain number of Congress MLA’s from each legislative assemblies had cast their votes at the PCC headquarters of each state across the country.
Meanwhile, Tharoor took to Twitter to congratulate Kharge over his victory. “It is a great honour & a huge responsibility to be President of @INCIndia &I wish @Kharge ji all success in that task. It was a privilege to have received the support of over a thousand colleagues,& to carry the hopes& aspirations of so many well-wishers of Congress across India,” said Tharoor
It was after a series of debates and some drama within the party, that Kharge’s name was brought up as a contender to Tharoor. Prior to Kharge, senior Congress leader and Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot was seen as a front runner to become next party president. However, following a rebellion among Congress MLA’s in Rajasthan against Gehlot being forced to step down as CM, he opted out of the race, paving the way for Kharge.
Although Kharge was touted as the “official candidate” of the Gandhi family, with many political observers as well as party rivals even referring to him becoming a “rubber stamp” if elected as the president, the party had vehemently denied these claims. Both Tharoor and Kharge had repeatedly maintained that the Gandhi family would be neutral about the polls.
It is for the first time in 20 years that elections were conducted for the post of Congress president and it’s also for the sixth time in the party’s history that a presidential election was conducted.
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