Mallikarjun Kharge is the new president of the Indian National Congress
As many expected, Shashi Tharoor lost, but now few expect the party to win voters in northern states. Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi reached Andhra Pradesh on his "unity march”.
New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) – For the first time in over 20 years, a member of the Gandhi family will not be the president of the Congress.
Mallikarjun Kharge was elected with 7,897 votes; his main challenger, Shashi Tharoor, received just over 1,000 votes in Monday’s voting, whose results were announced today.
“The decision of the party delegates is final and I accept it humbly. It is a privilege be a member of a party that allows its workers to choose their president,” Tharoor said.
Kharge’s victory was expected. The 80-year-old politician hails from the southern state of Karnataka. A Dalit, he joined the Congress in 1969 and since 1972 has won nine consecutive local elections in the Gurmikal constituency.
He served as a minister at the state level in Karnataka for several years and represented the opposition in both houses of the Indian Parliament.
The most challenging part of his political career may have come right now. Everyone is wondering whether his election will give new impetus to the Congress, India’s main opposition party, and make it competitive against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the 2024 general election.
In recent days, Kharge said he would not seek the approval of the Gandhi family, but he would seek "guidance" and "suggestions” from them.
According to some observers, the Dalit politician has a good chance of bringing together the various factions in the party and reducing defections; nevertheless, it is doubtful that the Congress will be able to attract voters in the north of the country, in particular Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which together elect 120 members out of 545.
The Congress today rules only two out of 28 Indian states.
According to some commentators, Shashi Tharoor is the only politician with the charisma and oratory skills capable of challenging Modi, but his election threatened to overshadow the de facto leader of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi.
The son of Sonia and Prime Minister Rajiv, who was assassinated in 1991, Rahul left the presidency in 2019, but has remained a key figure in the party, long criticised for being too beholden to the Gandhi family.
For months, Rahul has been on a 150-day “unity march” to gain new supporters, and is now in the east-central state of Andhra Pradesh; however, analysts see his chances as slim.
Since the start, the march has seemed more an attempt to rehabilitate his reputation after the political defeats of 2014 and 2019 than a real effort to revitalise the party, which, according to experts, needs above all radical reforms to be a credible alternative to the BJP.
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