Mallikarjun Kharge sweeps Congress president poll, gets 7,900 to Shashi Tharoor's 1,000 votes

NEW DELHI: Mallikarjun Kharge was on Wednesday expectedly elected new Congress president after he trounced rival Shashi Tharoor in a landslide in the party's internal elections, bringing down the curtains on the extended tenure of Sonia Gandhi and giving the party its first non-Gandhi head in 24 years.

Kharge is Congress's third Dalit chief after D Sanjivaiah (1962) and Jagjivan Ram in (December 1969).

After around five hours of counting of ballots, AICC election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry announced that Kharge received 7,897 (84%) out of the total 9,385 votes polled, against Tharoor's 1,072. After scrutiny, 416 votes were declared invalid.


Kharge’s task: A fine balancing act
In his first remarks after becoming the Congress president-elect, Mallikarjun Kharge spotlighted “the sacrifice of Sonia Gandhi who for 23 years nourished the party”, and “the initiative of Rahul Gandhi” who is trying to create a people’s movement against bigotry — thereby reiterating the primacy of the Gandhi family even as it recedes from formal authority.

For the affable octogenarian, who assumes charge of Congress at its most critical juncture, the trickiest challenge is posed by the experiment of installing a non-Gandhi president, after a break of 24 years.

It is more of a bifurcation of authority, with the political leadership represented by the Gandhis while the AICC executive is headed by Kharge.


Forced by Rahul Gandhi’s insistence against everybody else’s wishes, the uncharted territory burdens Kharge with the responsibility of evolving a system which will balance the twin arms without turbulence. Given the narrative he had to bear, and painstakingly rebuff, in the run-up to presidential election, the quintessential loyalist knows that he would be susceptible to the charge of “remote control”.

Personally, Rahul tried to facilitate matters by telling media Wednesday that his own political role will be decided by Kharge, to whom all party workers will report now.

Kharge told reporters that Rahul had called to congratulate him, even as the senior leader expressed his happiness that Rahul found time from his busy yatra schedule to call.

A seamless in-house functioning will be a must for Kharge to assert authority on cadres, which will help him press ahead with his likely principal mandate of coordination and management — an important task in the wake of Congress’s political marginalisation post-2014, rampant factionalism, and non-stop exodus from party ranks.

Speaking to media, Kharge, who will assume office on October 26, sought to reach out to workers with a unity call.

“No one is small or big, and we have to all work like karyakartas to strengthen the organisation,” he said. He lashed out at ruling BJP and PM Modi, saying “We have to together fight the threat to democracy and the Constitution. We have to fight the fascist forces... who are attacking democracy and the people of the country.”