India: Mallikarjun Kharge officially takes charge as Congress president

On Wednesday, veteran Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge officially took charge as the party president at the All India Congress Committee headquarters in Delhi.

Congress Central Election Authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry handed over the certificate of election to him..

"I hope other parties draw a lesson from the Congress and hold polls for presidency by secret ballot," said Mistry.

Former party president Sonia Gandhi, MP Rahul Gandhi, and Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra — along with other senior leaders and MPs — were present at the occasion.

Ahead of the event at the Congress headquarters today, Kharge met former prime minister Manmohan Singh at his home yesterday.

This morning, he paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi at his memorial, Rajghat. He also visited memorials of former prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, as well as former deputy PM Jagjivan Ram.

Kharge, who was elected the first Congress chief outside the Nehru-Gandhi family in 24 years, has his task cut out for him, as the party faces several electoral and organisational challenges.

A man of vast organisational and administrative experience, Kharge entered the electoral fray for the party's top post after Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot opted against contesting.

Kharge, 80, was seen as the "establishment's candidate" against Shashi Tharoor, and polled 7,897 votes against 1,072 received by his rival.

A leader who has risen from the grassroots, Kharge belongs to the Dalit community and will the second leader from Karnataka to hold the top party post after S Nijalingappa became the Congress president in 1968.

With over five decades' experience in active politics, Kharge has been a union minister, Congress leader in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, and has held several portfolios in Karnataka, where he was MLA nine times.

A combative, articulate and accessible politician who is comfortable both in Hindi and English, Kharge has been a strong critic of the BJP-led government.

He faces major challenges to work out strategies in terms of Congress revival in the Hindi heartland states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, as also in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. The Congress has seen an erosion in its base in some other states including in the northeast. AAP is also seeking to emerge as a challenger in some states.

While Kharge's immediate challenges are the assembly polls in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, which will go the polls later this year, several other states — including his home state Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan — will go the polls next year, before the 2024 general elections; a crucial battle.

Many senior party leaders have left Congress in recent months and years, and the Congress debacle in Punjab and Uttarakhand assembly polls earlier this year has been blamed on the choices that the party leadership made in these states.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is on the Bharat Jodo Yatra, indicated that Kharge would decide his role.

Kharge will take over as party chief from Sonia Gandhi, who was serving as an interim chief after Rahul Gandhi stepped down, following the party's debacle in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Sonia Gandhi had earlier steered the party for 19 years and played a pivotal role in the formation of two UPA governments.

A former union minister of Labour and Railways, Kharge resigned as the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha to contest the presidential polls, in accordance with the one person - one post norm.

Born on July 21, 1942, Kharge was active in student politics, and was the general secretary of the Students Union, in the Government Arts and Science College in Gulbarga, from 1964-65.

With Kharge's election as the new party chief, the Congress will seek to blunt criticisms of its "family-oriented politics".