The Indian National Congress is all set to have a new president, who will also be its first non-Gandhi chief in 24 years. The electoral contest was held between veteran Mallikarjun Kharge and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor.
Mallikarjun Kharge has been considered the Gandhi family’s favourite, while Tharoor pitched himself as the candidate of change. This will be the sixth time in its nearly 137-year-old history that an electoral contest would decide who would take up the mantle of the party’s president. This election is the result of the resignation of Rahul Gandhi, after the party lost against BJP in that year’s Lok Sabha polls, its second successive defeat.
Not risking comic confusion, Tharoor’s camp requested the party’s central election authority chairman issue of a directive asking PCC delegates to mark “1” against the name of their choice on the ballot paper that has Mallikarjun Kharge on serial number ‘1’ and Tharoor on ‘2’. Mistry is said to have conveyed to them that now a tick would be accepted against the name of the preferred candidate instead of ‘1’, the sources said.
The contest between the two veteran leaders has observed a massive turnout of voters Monday with close to 96 per cent of Pradesh Congress Committee delegates casting their ballot, according to the party. Of the 9,915 PCC delegates, 9,497 cast their votes across state capitals, including 87 at the AICC headquarters and 50 at the Yatra campsite, said Madhusudan Mistry, who is heading the party’s Central Election Authority (CEA). The counting took place in the presence of five agents from each side, while two agents from each side will be kept in reserve.
By the end of the first round, Shashi Tharoor’s count was 118 while Mallikaarjun Kharge’s was 600. The counting was conducted in a total of 16 rounds. Soon after the first count, Shashi Tharoor writes a letter to Congress Central Election Authority chairman Madhusudhan Mistry, alleging “extremely serious irregularities in the conduct of election in UP” & demands “that all votes from UP be deemed invalid”.
By afternoon, the results were announced. While Mallikarjun Kharge received 7,897 votes, Shashi Tharoor got 1,072 votes.
