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Congress votes to elect its next party president
The counting will take place at the AICC headquarters on October 19 and all ballot boxes from the states will be brought to Delhi
New Delhi: A total of 9,497 of 9,915 Congress delegates voted on Monday to choose between lawmakers Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor as the next party president, Madhusudan Mistry, the party’s poll in charge,said. The election without any Gandhi family nominee marked a fresh chapter in the Congress, and ended without any adverse incidents in any polling station.
Kharge is tipped to be the Congress president when the result is declared on October 19.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving chief who returned to the top post in 2019,endorsed the election and said: “I have been waiting for a long time for this thing,” while going to vote at the All India congress Committee headquarters. Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra voted at the AICC office, while Rahul Gandhi, spearheading the Bharat Jodo Yatra, cast his vote at a campsite in Sanganakallu, Karnataka.
Mistry later told the media that more than 95% of the delegates have participated in the election, according to the initial estimate. “In smaller states, the voting had been 100%. But in some bigger states, the voting had been around 95%,” Mistry said. “As a political party, we have completed the election in a democratic manner. The Congress has shown how internal democracy works in a party.”
While the polling marked an election for the top post in 22 years, it was the first election in 25 years not fought by any Nehru-Gandhi family member. In 1997, Sitaram Kesri, Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot entered into a triangular contest. Kesri secured 83.4% of the votes, Pawar got 11.9% and Pilot managed 4.7%.
In 2000, when veteran Congress leader Jitendra Prasada challenged Sonia Gandhi in the poll, he managed to get just 94 votes, while Gandhi found support of 7,448 voters.
A section of the party said that Tharoor is certain to get more votes than Prasada and might end up securing a higher share of votes than Pawar in 1997. “He fought well despite a visible bias against him from a section of the state units. He came up with an innovative slogan, Think Tomorrow, Think Tharoor, and had an impact among the young voters,” a senior leader said, requesting anonymity.
The counting will take place at the AICC headquarters on October 19 and all ballot boxes from the states will be brought to Delhi. Mistry explained that the ballots would be thrown on a large piece of cloth and mixed with next set of ballots. This mixing process will go on for 36 times. “This will be done to ensure no one knows how individual voters or a particular state voted,” he said.
At the AICC, all 87 enlisted voters cast their votes. The list of voters in AICC also included former finance minister P Chidambaram, former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, general secretaries Jairam Ramesh, and Randeep Singh Surjewala and veterans such as Janardan Dwivedi.
The new president will decide on holding an election for the Congress Working Committee and the Central Election Committee, a key demand of the G23 group of leaders, when the AICC plenary meets later this year, said Mistry.
In the morning, Tharoor called Kharge and they wished each other luck in the spirit of a friendly contest. “It is a part of our internal election. Whatever we said to each other is on a friendly note. Together, we have to build the party. Tharoor telephoned me and wished me luck and I also said the same,” Kharge said.
Mistry also announced that all issues flagged by Tharoor’s team were settled, but when asked about Tharoor’s remarks of an uneven contest, Mistry said, “There were some things that we rectified. But can’t help if any voter refuse to meet any candidate.”
