From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: With the rejection of candidature of former Jharkhand minister K N Tripathi, the Congress now has a direct fight for the party presidentship between Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor in the polling on October 17. Their names were put on the notice board at the AICC headquarters here on Saturday.
Kharge (80) is a Rajya Sabha member and its leader of Opposition while Tharoor (66) is a Lok Sabha member for the second term from Thiruvananthpuram, the state capital of Kerala. Kharge has a huge advantage as seen from 140 party leaders seconding his nomination papers and everyone saw him as an official candidate of the Gandhis while Tharoor got backing of only 50 in his nomination papers.
Central Election Committee chairman Madhusudan Mistry told reporters here that if none of the candidates withdraws in the next seven days till October 8, the last day of withdrawals, the elections will be held through secret ballot on October 17.
He said four nomination papers were rejected in the scrutiny on account of either the signatures of the candidates or the proposers not matching those in record.
Tharoor was candidate in stating that “if you are satisfied with party’s working, vote for Kharge saheb. If you want change, I am there. But there is no ideological problem.”
Though he was a part of G-23 group of leaders seeking revamp of the party, he found many group members backing Kharge by signing his nomination papers. The group was opposed to Rahul Gandhi doing the back-seating of the party on behalf of his mother Sonia Gandhi since she took over after he quit as the Congress President after the party’s rout in the Lok Sabha elections.
But when asked about the role of Gandhi family after election of the party president, he said, “Gandhi family & Congress’ DNA is the same…No (party) president is such a fool to tell “Goodbye” to Gandhi family. They are a huge asset to us.”
