Congress President Poll Results: Mallikarjun Kharge defeats Shashi Tharoor by over 6,000 votes

Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge today won the party’s presidential polls, making him the first non-Gandhi party president in over two decades. He defeated party presidential candidate Shashi Tharoor by over 6,000 votes. Kharge received 7,897 of the total 9,385 votes, and his opponent, Shashi Tharoor, trailed behind with 1,072 votes.  He will now replace interim president Sonia Gandhi, who has led the party since 2019.

Reacting to the result, Tharoor said that it was a privilege to have received the support of over a thousand colleagues.

Gandhi family loyalist & poll winner

Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge, 80, is known to be a staunch Gandhi family loyalist from Karnataka. With over 50 years of experience in politics, he is the second AICC President from Karnataka after S Nijalingappa. He is the second Dalit leader after Jagjivan Ram to hold the post.

Born in a humble family in the Bidar district of Karnataka, Kharge studied law before jumping into politics. He was elected MLA nine times in a row from his home district of Gulbarga, which was later renamed Kalaburagi.

After joining the party in 1969, he first was elected as the President of the Gulbarga City Congress Committee. His career high point was the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, where he was successful in turning down the Narendra Modi wave in Karnataka, especially in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region. He won the Gulbarga seat with a margin of over 74,000 votes.

But in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, BJP leader Umesh Jadhav defeated him in Gulbarga by a margin of 95,452 votes.

Speaking about Kharge, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said: “Kharge has always avoided flamboyance and has been the quintessential organisation man working in a self-effacing manner to advance the collective interests of the Congress party. He has the good wishes of all Congressmen and Congresswomen.”

Presidential polls

The counting of votes started around 10 am on Wednesday at AICC headquarters in New Delhi. Secret ballot boxes were brought in from states units.

Earlier in the day, Tharoor’s polling agent Salman Soz reportedly wrote to Congress central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry and asked: “that all votes from UP be deemed invalid.”

He complained about voting malpractice and stated that Tharoor’s polling agents were “threatened” during the poll process. Soz wrote, “We suspect voter fraud in this election. There were delegates who were not present in the Lucknow area on the day of voting and their votes were cast. There were complaints from people about not being allowed to cast their votes since others had already cast their votes.”

Reacting to the letter, Thiruvananthapuram MP tweeted that “It was unfortunate that a strictly internal letter to the CEA was leaked to the media.”