Mallikarjun Kharge, who comes from Karnataka, has succeeded Sonia Gandhi as party president by defeating his colleague and Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Shashi Tharoor, in an election which was held on Monday.
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge was elected the first non-Gandhi president of the party after 24 years. The 80-year-old leader, who comes from Karnataka, succeeds Sonia Gandhi. Kharge defeated his colleague and Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Shashi Tharoor, in an election which was held on Monday. As many as 9,500 delegates from across the country voted to elect the president.
Kharge is the second president of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) from Karnataka after S Nijalimgappa and the second Dalit leaders after Babu Jagjivam Ram to become the party chief. A nine-time MLA in a row, Kharge started his career in politics as a trade union leader in his home district, Gulbarga. In 1969, he took the membership of the Congress and became the head of the city party unit.
During the Modi wave in 2014, it was Kharge who won from Gulbaraga by a margin of 74,000 votes. He, however, lost to Bharatiya Janata Party’s Umesh Jadhav in the Lok Sabha elections of 2019. This was his first electoral loss in the political career for over five decades. Kharge has served the party and the government in different capacities.
Kharge was the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha from 2014 to 2019, but he did not enjoy the status of the leader of opposition, as the Congress did not get the 10% of Lok Sabha seats. During the rule of the government formed by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by the Congress he served as Union Minister for Labour and Employment. He recently resigned from the post of leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha after he decided to contest the Congress presidential election. Because of his cool temperament, Kharge has never stocked any major controversy and follows Buddhism. Before joining politics, he was a lawyer.
Born on 21 July, 1942, Kharge was married to Radhabai on May 13, 1968 and they have two daughters and three sons. One of them Priyank Kharge is an MLA and a former minister of Karnataka.
New party chief will decide my role, says Rahul Gandhi
According to a report from Adoni in Western Andhra Pradesh, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who is on Bharat Jodo Yatra said that the new president would decide on “what my role and how I will be deployed.” He made the statement at a brief interaction with media persons at Adoni in Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday.
When asked whether he would be reporting to the new president, Rahul Gandhi said, “President is the supreme authority in the Congress and everyone reports to him. My role – I am very clear that the Congress president will decide what my role is and how I will be deployed.”
