New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge has tendered his resignation as the Leader of Opposition of Rajya Sabha after filing his nomination for the party’s presidential poll. “I hereby tender my resignation from the post of Leader of Opposition, Rajya Sabha, consequent upon my filing of nomination for the post of President, All India Congress Committee,” Kharge wrote to party president Sonia Gandhi on Friday evening.
Kharge’s resignation is in line with the party’s ‘One person, One post’ principle that was announced at the Udaipur ‘Chintan Shivir’ in May.
Senior leaders P Chidambaram and Digvijaya Singh are learnt to be the frontrunners to replace 80-year-old Kharge.
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A Dalit leader from Karnataka, Kharge became the leader of opposition in the Upper House in February 2021 following senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s retirement. Azad has since quit the Congress and launched his own party, the Democratic Azad Party.
Kharge and Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor are in the fray for Congress presidential poll as the nomination of the third candidate, KN Tripathi, was rejected by the party on Saturday. The three had filed nominations on Friday, the last day of the process.
The polling, if needed, will be held on October 17. The counting of votes will be taken up on October 19 and the results will be declared the same day.
{{/usCountry}}The polling, if needed, will be held on October 17. The counting of votes will be taken up on October 19 and the results will be declared the same day.
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Kharge’s nomination was backed by several G-23 leaders (a group that raised the demand for internal reforms in the party) including Manish Tewari, Bhupinder Hooda and Prithiviraj Chavan. However, Tharoor, 66, refused to disclose his backers to the public.
Congress’s central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry said a total of 20 nomination forms have been received and the Gandhi family is not supporting any candidate. On Saturday, Mistry said four nominations were rejected as signatures were repeated or did not match.
While Kharge submitted 14 forms, Tharoor submitted five and Tripathi one.