Staff Reporter
NEW DELHI: A total of 9,497 of 9,915 Congress delegates voted on Monday to choose between Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor as the next party president, Madhusudan Mistry, the party’s poll in charge,said. The election without any Gandhi family nominee marked a fresh chapter in the Congress, and ended without any adverse incidents in any polling station.
Kharge is tipped to be the Congress president when the result is declared on October 19.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving chief who returned to the top post in 2019,endorsed the election and said: “I have been waiting for a long time for this thing,” while going to vote at the All India congress Committee headquarters. Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra voted at the AICC office, while Rahul Gandhi, spearheading the Bharat Jodo Yatra, cast his vote at a campsite in Sanganakallu, Karnataka.
Mistry later told the media that more than 95% of the delegates have participated in the election, according to the initial estimate. “In smaller states, the voting had been 100%. But in some bigger states, the voting had been around 95%,” Mistry said. “As a political party, we have completed the election in a democratic manner. The Congress has shown how internal democracy works in a party.”