NEW DELHI: As Congress delegates voted to elect the party’s president, it was all but certain that senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge would take over as the new chief from Mrs Sonia Gandhi, who said she was waiting for this moment for long. The result will be out on October 19.
The contest was between Kharge and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor. While Tharoor put up a valiant fight, the odds are heavily in favour of Kharge as he has the blessings of the party establishment.
After the polling ended, Congress’ central election authority chairman, Madhusudan Mistry said that he was satisfied with the poll process. He expressed confidence that the elections were free, fair, and transparent.
He added that there were no complaints from any of the polling booths and the voting had concluded smoothly. He also said that 96 per cent voting took place across the states and almost 9,500 delegates cast their vote.
Taking a dig at internal democracy in other parties, he said they could draw lessons from the Congress. He said: “The most satisfactory thing for us was that in all states where polling booths were set up, no adverse incident was reported. This is a big achievement… Polls were held in an open process in a peaceful manner. The Congress Party has shown what internal democracy is and other parties that want to take a lesson from it can do so.”
The voting started smoothly with party MP P. Chidambaram being the first voter at the AICC office, followed by Jairam Ramesh. Congress president Sonia Gandhi also cast her vote here. While going to vote, she told reporters she had been “waiting for this moment for long.”
AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also voted at the party headquarters in the national capital. Congress MP Rahul Gandhi cast his vote at a polling booth set up at a Bharat Jodo Yatra campsite in Karnataka.
Tharoor cast his vote for the presidential election at the PCC office in Thiruvananthapuram, while Kharge did so at the PCC office in Bengaluru.
All the ballot boxes will now be transported to New Delhi and the counting will take place on Wednesday, October 19.
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