New Delhi: The Congress party is all set to get its first non-Gandhi president after 24 years today. Mallikarjun Kharge and Sashi Tharoor are pitted against each other for the party’s top post. More than 9500 delegates voted to elect the party’s next president on Monday. The voting was done between 10 AM and 4 PM.
The counting of votes will take place at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters. The voting was done at 36 polling stations across the country with 67 booths. Along with the ballot boxes, senior party leaders will also reach Delhi on the day of the results.
Senior party leaders, including Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, are also expected to be present in Delhi for the counting and the result. No member of the Gandhi family is contesting for the post of party president.
It is not the first time that a non-Gandhi leader is contesting for the party presidency post-Independence, Jitendra Prasad contested for the post of the president about 22 years ago against Sonia Gandhi in which Sonia emerged as a winner holding the mantle of the party for 20 years.
Sonia Gandhi is the longest-serving president of the party, having held the office for over twenty years from 1998 to 2017 and since 2019. This is the sixth time in its nearly 137-year-old history that polls will be held to elect the President of the party. In the 2017 elections, Rahul Gandhi became the president unopposed.
“There’s no problem with our ideology but I want to bring a change in our way of work… Mallikarjun Kharge is an experienced leader, if he wins, we’ll work in cooperation naturally,” Congress Presidential candidate Shashi Tharoor had said ahead of the polls, as reported by the news agency ANI.
“It’s my duty to strengthen the org & fight vindictive policies of BJP-RSS, they’re dividing the country on basis of religion; they’re dividing the backward, scheduled castes, minorities. They see everything through an election point of view,” ANI quoted Kharge as saying ahead of the polls
“We’ve to fight from parliament to street. It’s difficult as unemployment& inflation are there, GDP growth is falling, the value of rupee is going down, petrol-diesel & essential commodities’ prices are going up,’ he added.
(With ANI Inputs)