Congress President Election: The counting of 9,500 votes cast across the country earlier this week will begin at 10 am at the AICC headquarters in New Delhi. Kharge is considered the ‘unofficial official candidate’ of the Gandhi family with a large number of senior leaders backing him, Tharoor has projected himself as a candidate for change. This will be the sixth time in its nearly 137-year-old history that an electoral contest will decide who will take over as the party’s president.
Kharge got 7,897 votes out of a total of 9,385 votes, while his rival Shashi Tharoor was trailing by 1,072 votes. Kharge will replace interim Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, who has held the position since Rahul Gandhi stepped down after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Earlier today, party leader Rahul Gandhi, referring to Kharge as the new Congress president, responded to a question that appears to be slippery. Meanwhile, on the eve of counting of votes, the Tharoor camp approached the election authority and alleged that some irregularities took place during the election.
The Tharoor camp is said to have claimed that irregularities have taken place in three states, including Uttar Pradesh, which has the largest number of PCC representatives. He alleged that in Uttar Pradesh the ballot boxes were not sealed after the polling was over as per the guidelines issued by the authority.
While Kharge is considered the ‘unofficial official candidate’ of the Gandhi family, with a large number of senior leaders backing him, Tharoor projected himself as a candidate for change. This will be the sixth time in its nearly 137-year-old history that an electoral contest will decide who will take over as the party’s president.
According to the party, a high-stakes contest between the two stalwarts saw a huge voter turnout on Monday, with nearly 96 per cent of the Pradesh Congress Committee representatives voting. The party’s Central Election Authority (CEA) chief Madhusudan Mistry said out of 9,915 PCC delegates, 9,497 cast their votes in state capitals, including 87 at the AICC headquarters and 50 at the yatra camp.