Oct 19,2022:Senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge has been elected as the President of the Indian National Congress, becoming the first member outside the Gandhi family to helm the party, in 24 years. When the results of the Congress presidential polls were announced on October 19, Wednesday, 80-year-old Kharge, who is a 9-time MLA from Karnataka’s Gulbarga, emerged victorious, by securing a margin of 6,285 votes over Shashi Tharoor, MP from Thiruvananthapuram. While Kharge received 7,897 votes, Tharoor got 1,072 votes.
Kharge is the 10th Congress party chief from South India. The party did not have a President from south India for more than a quarter century. Earlier this week, on Monday, more than 9,500 Congress delegates across the country had cast their votes to elect the party president. The delegates, composed of members of the Pradesh Congress Committees (PCCs) of each state as well as a certain number of Congress MLA’s from each legislative assemblies had cast their votes at the PCC headquarters of each state across the country.
Meanwhile, Tharoor took to Twitter to congratulate Kharge over his victory. “It is a great honour & a huge responsibility to be President of @INCIndia &I wish @Kharge ji all success in that task. It was a privilege to have received the support of over a thousand colleagues,& to carry the hopes& aspirations of so many well-wishers of Congress across India,” said Tharooor.
