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Lok Sabha election 2019: Mallikarjun Kharge, the Congress leader who has never tasted defeat
Over the course of his political career, 76-year-old Kharge, who hails from a Scheduled Caste community, has held several posts including that of state home minister between 1999 and 2004.
Mallikarjun Kharge, the two-time Congress MP is a force to be reckoned with in the northern Hyderabad-Karnataka region, especially in Kalaburagi, Yadgir, Bidar and Raichur districts. Kharge was rewarded for his unflinching loyalty to the party by being made its leader in the Lok Sabha.
However, Kharge’s association with the Congress has been bittersweet as he missed out on becoming the chief minister on at least three occasions, including most recently in 2013 when the party chose Siddaramaiah, who had switched over in 2006, over the veteran leader.
Popularly known as “Solillada Sardara” (a leader who has never tasted defeat), Kharge won nine consecutive assembly elections between 1973 and 2008 and two Lok Sabha elections in 2009 and 2014. Over the course of these years the 76-year-old, who hails from a Scheduled Caste community, has held several posts including that of state home minister between 1999 and 2004.
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The going has become tougher for Kharge as resentment has surfaced in the Kalaburagi district after his son Priyank Kharge was made a minister in the Siddaramaiah cabinet despite being a first-time legislator.
Amid Kharge’s increasing clout local leaders, especially former minister Malikayya Guttedar and Baburao Chinchansur, quit the Congress to join the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the state assembly polls in 2018. Kharge has hit out at the party’s local leadership for not involving him in decisions, especially on the cabinet expansion effected in December last year.
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Earlier this month, another disgruntled leader, MLA Umesh Jadhav, joined the BJP and is its candidate to contest against Kharge in a prestige battle. This is especially so as Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in February that Kharge’s speech on the motion of the thanks for the President’s address might be his last.
