New Delhi: Veteran Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge was elected the party’s new president on Wednesday, the first leader outside the Gandhi family to hold the reins in over two decades.
Kharge beat his rival Shashi Tharoor’s 1,072 votes with a thumping 7,897, as party leader Pramod Tiwari announced the results in Delhi. The senior Karnataka politician is only the third Dalit to lead the 138-year-old party.
Kharge, who is expected to take oath as the party’s new president on 25 October, was seen as the “establishment candidate” said to have been propped up by the Gandhi family.
Earlier in the day, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, who is on a 3,500-kilometre Bharat Jodo Yatra, had said that Kharge would decide what his new role would now be. Rahul was president from 2017 to 2019, while his mother Sonia Gandhi held the position since 1998 and again as interim chief from 2019 to 2022.
In the Andhra Pradesh leg of the Yatra, undertaken by the leadership to revive interest in the party, Rahul reiterated that the president was the “supreme authority” in the Congress, and the one who would decide the way forward.
Though Shashi Tharoor’s team had raised many questions on the impartiality of the polls held Monday, the leader tweeted: “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.”
Incidentally, Tharoor polled more than the runners-up in the last two elections to the post of president.
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. pic.twitter.com/NistXfQGN1
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 19, 2022
Of the 9,375 votes polled Monday, Kharge got 7,897 while 416 votes were held invalid. Soon after, Congress Election Authority Chairman Madhusudan Mistry officially declared Kharge the president.
A former minister of railways, Kharge resigned from his chair as Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha on 1 October, 2022 to contest the presidential polls – in keeping with the party’s recently-adopted measure that one leader will hold only one post.
Kharge has won elections, state and national, since 1972 and his first run in the Karnataka Assembly was a record nine consecutive terms. After the Assembly wins – from Gurmitkal and Chittapur — Kharge won the general election from Gulbarga in 2009, which marked his tenth consecutive victory.
He won Gulbarga again in 2014 but lost in 2019 to the BJP by a margin of 95,452 votes. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed from Karnataka in 2020.
Kharge was also the Congress’ Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha from 2014 to 2019.
Also read: 9,500 Congress delegates vote for 1st non-Gandhi prez in 25 yrs. Waited for this day, says Sonia