PTI

New Delhi, October 18

The Congress will get its first non-Gandhi president in 24 years on Wednesday after greater than 9,500 votes forged to decide on between senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor are counted to cap the election contest, the sixth in its 137-year-old historical past.

The counting of the votes forged on Monday will start at 10 am on Wednesday on the AICC headquarters right here. All sealed poll bins from the 68 polling cubicles arrange throughout the nation have been introduced right here and stored in a “strong room” on the social gathering workplace.

While Kharge is taken into account the agency favorite together with his perceived proximity to the Gandhis and numerous senior leaders backing him, Tharoor has pitched himself because the candidate of change.

The sealed poll bins will probably be opened earlier than the candidates’ brokers and the poll papers will probably be blended repeatedly.

Congress central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry has expressed satisfaction with the social gathering’s presidential polls course of, saying it was “free, fair and transparent”. He has additionally stated it was a secret poll and nobody would get to know who voted for whom.

Of the overall 9,915 Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates that shaped the electoral faculty to choose the social gathering chief in a secret poll, over 9,500 forged their poll at PCC workplaces and the AICC headquarters, Mistry stated at a press convention after the polling ended on Monday.

The Congress has claimed that its inside democracy has no parallel in every other social gathering and it’s the just one to have a central election authority for organisational polls.

It is the sixth time in Congress’ practically 137-year-old historical past that an electoral contest is deciding who would take up the mantle of the social gathering’s president as successor to Sonia Gandhi.

It was approach again in 1939, when an electoral contest determined who could be the Congress president, and Mahatma Gandhi’s candidate P Sitaramayya had misplaced to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

Then in 1950 got here the Congress’ first post-Independence election for the put up of social gathering president when Purshottam Das Tandon and Acharya Kripalani confronted off. Surprisingly, Tandon, seen as a Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel loyalist, gained the competition, trumping the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s alternative.

In 1977, following the resignation of Dev Kant Barooah as social gathering president within the wake of the defeat within the Lok Sabha polls, Okay Brahmananda Reddy defeated Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Karan Singh within the social gathering’s polls for AICC chief.

The subsequent election that wanted a contest got here 20 years later in 1997 when Sitaram Kesri squared off in a triangular contest with Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot. Except for Maharashtra and components of Uttar Pradesh, all state Congress models had backed Kesri. He posted a landslide victory, getting 6,224 delegates’ votes towards Pawar’s 882 and Pilot’s 354.

The fifth contest got here in 2000 and this was the one time a Gandhi member of the family was challenged within the elections with Jitendra Prasada taking over Sonia Gandhi. Prasada suffered a crushing defeat by the hands of Gandhi, who garnered over 7,400 votes. Prasada had reportedly polled a paltry 94 votes.

The present polls are historic as the brand new president would substitute Sonia Gandhi, the longest-serving social gathering president who has been on the helm since 1998, barring the 2 years between 2017 and 2019 when Rahul Gandhi had taken over.

The Nehru-Gandhi household has been on the helm of the social gathering for about 40 years since Independence. The 5 relations to tackle the mantle of the Congress president included Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

Electors within the Monday’s Congress presidential polls had been requested to place a tick mark towards their candidate within the poll paper after Tharoor’s workforce took up with the social gathering’s prime ballot physique the difficulty of its earlier directive that voters write “1” to replicate their choice. This, the workforce stated, would possibly result in confusion.

The political journeys of the 2 dramatis personae within the Congress presidential elections have been disparate.

Kharge is a grassroots politician and hardcore loyalist of the Gandhi household, whereas Tharoor, a social media pioneer and infrequently outspoken, joined the Congress solely in 2009 after an extended stint on the United Nations.

Ahead of the polling, Kharge had stated he would don’t have any disgrace in taking the recommendation and help of the Gandhi household in working the social gathering affairs, if he turns into its president.

Tharoor, on his half, took a veiled dig at some senior leaders supporting Kharge, saying that some colleagues had been “indulging in ‘netagiri’ and telling party workers that they know who Sonia Gandhi wants elected”.