Congress president: Mallikarjun Kharge vs Shashi Tharoor it’s going to be
After much drama, the competition has finally got a settled look. The fight for the Indian National Congress presidency is going to be between Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor.
Following the political turmoil in Rajasthan, with a majority of the ruling Congress’s MLAs resigning in protest against the possibility of Sachin Pilot replacing Ashok Gehlot as the chief minister, withdrew from the contest. (Interestingly, this fiasco might cost him the chief ministership as Sonia Gandhi is reported to be livid about his supposed role in insinuating the MLAs to resign, which ultimately forced him to withdraw from the race for president.)
A few names had been bandied about as his replacement, like Kumari Selja and KC Venugopal. Now it has emerged that another Gandhi family favourite, Mallikarjun Kharge would become the candidate, and most probably, win too.
Gehlot met the veteran leader, and the current leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha, earlier today and, after coming out, announced to the press waiting outside his support for him.
Talk is also that Kharge would resign from his Rajya Sabha in accordance with the party’s ‘one-person-one-post’ rule.
Both Kharge and Tharoor filed their nominations today. Proposers for the former included heavyweight veterans, including, among others, both ‘G-23’ dissenting group members like Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Prithviraj Chavan as well as all-along-Gamdhi-family-loyalists like Digvijaya Singh, AK Antony and Ajay Maken.
Kharge’s main opposition, Shashi Tharoor was also a member of the so-called G-23 group. There is a third candidate as well—former Jharkhand minister KN Tripathi.
