Congress set for historic election, to choose new president on October 17: All you need to know | India News
Here’s everything you need to know about the election:
- Voting will take place on October 17. The name of the new party chairman will be announced on October 19.
- More than 9,000 deputies of the Congressional Committee of Pradesh (PCC) form the electorate that will choose the party leader in a secret ballot.
- Voting will take place at the headquarters of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in Delhi and at more than 65 polling stations across the country.
- Delegates in all states will vote from 10am to 4pm at the polling stations corresponding to the ‘tick’ mark for the candidate they support, the President of the Central Elections Authority of Congress Madhusudan Mistry said.
- While the party leader
Sonia Gandhi and Parliamentary Secretary-General Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is expected to vote at AICC headquarters,Rahul Gandhi will vote at Karnataka’s Bharat Jodo Yatra campsite in Sanganakallu in Ballari along with about 40 other Bharat Yatris as PCC delegates. - The Secretary-General/State Clerk, the Secretary and the General Secretary of the AICC shall not be allowed to vote in their designated state.
- After the vote, the sealed boxes will be shipped to Delhi and kept in a secure room at the AICC headquarters.
- Ballots will be mixed before counting begins so that no one knows how many votes a candidate gets from a particular state, Mistry said.
- The election for the President of the National Assembly is taking place for the sixth time in the party’s 137-year history.
- The last election contest for the top position of the party took place in 2000 when Jitendra Prasada suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Sonia Gandhi.
6th election in 137 years
Congress has declared that its internal democracy has no parallels with any other party and that it is the only party with central suffrage to organized polls. In most cases, a candidate has won by no means but there have been five times in the long history of the party when an election has been called for.
- In 1939, a contest was held between Mahatma Gandhi’s candidate P Sitaramayya and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose won.
- In 1950, the National Assembly held the first elections after Independence. Purshotttam Das Tandon and Acharya Kripalani face off against each other for the top spot. Surprisingly, Tandon, considered a Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel loyalist, won the contest to outdo the choice of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. - In 1977, after Dev Kant Barooah resigned as party chairman after losing the Lok Sabha poll, K Brahmananda Reddy defeated
Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Karan Singh in the party vote for the post of AICC chief. - The next election required a contest 20 years later in 1997 when Sitaram Kesri squared in a triangle contest with Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot. With the exception of Maharashtra and parts of Uttar Pradesh, all state Parliament units support Kesri. He posted a resounding victory receiving 6,224 delegate votes against Pawar’s 882 and Pilot’s 354.
- The fifth contest took place in 2000 and it was the only time a Gandhi family member was challenged for election with Jitendra Prasada taking on Sonia Gandhi. Prasada suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Sonia Gandhi, who garnered more than 7,400 votes, while Prasada is said to have had a meager 94 votes.
Longest serving president
The upcoming polls are sure to be historic as the new president will replace Sonia Gandhi, the longest-serving party president who has been in power since 1998, minus two years from 2017 to 2019 when Rahul Gandhi came to power.
In the post-Independence era, someone from the Gandhi family ruled the party for a total of more than 40 years.
After Independence, the party has so far been led by 16 people, of which 5 are presidents from the Gandhi family.
Kharge vs Tharoor
Kharge was considered a favorite because of his closeness to the Gandhis and the support of senior leaders, even as Tharoor saw himself as a candidate for change.
During the election campaign, although Tharoor raised the issue of uneven playing field, both the candidate and the party insisted that the Gandhis were neutral and had no “official candidate”.
The contrasts in the campaigns were clear, while Kharge’s campaign saw a number of senior leaders, PCC leaders and top leaders receive him at the state headquarters he visited. , Tharoor was mainly greeted by young PCC delegates with PCC leaders mostly absent from his events. .
Tharoor has emphasized during his election campaign that he is the candidate of change while Kharge is the ‘candidate of continuity’.
He also claims that young people and those in the lower ranks of the party are backing him, while seniors are backing his opponent.
For his part, Kharge highlighted his experience, rising up the ranks of the organization over decades, and his ability to bring people along.
Both leaders insisted that the Gandhis hold a special place at the party with Kharge saying he would seek their “guidance” and “proposals”, and Tharoor insisting that there was no speaker of Parliament. No one can distance themselves from the Gandhi family “like them. DNA runs in the blood of the party”.
Same ideals, different backgrounds
Kharge and Tharoor not only possess opposite attitudes, but also have an equally disparate political journey.
On one side was 80-year-old Kharge, a grassroots politician and a hardline loyalist of the Gandhi family; and the other is the 66-year-old Tharoor – articulate, erudite and frugal – who is known to speak his mind and joined Parliament in 2009 after a long career at the United Nations. .
The contrast is not only limited to their attitudes and thoughts but also their backgrounds – while Kharge was born into a poor family in Varavatti in the Bidar district, having attended school and bachelor’s and Laws in Gulbarga, Tharoor was born in London and has a phenomenal educational background.
Tharoor, who hails from Kerala’s Nair community, has studied at leading institutes in India and USA, including St StephenCollege in Delhi and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts.
He completed his Ph. in 1978 from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
A leader with more than 50 years of experience in politics, Kharge, who was elected MLA for nine consecutive occasions and referred to by his party colleagues as the Dalit leader, he has seen steady rise in his career chart from humble beginnings as a union leader in Gulbarga district, now Kalaburagi, his hometown.
(With input from agencies)
