Most past Congress chiefs have been elected unopposed. This is only the 6th time in the party’s 137-year history, and the first since 2000, that an election will decide the winner of a presidential contest.
Booth at the Bharat Jodo Yatra campsite in Karnataka’s Bellari
Here’s all you need to know about the election process:
- Polling taking place between 10am and 4pm; booths set up at AICC headquarters in Delhi and at over 65 polling booths across the country.
- Delegates to put a ‘tick’ mark for the candidate they support, said Central Election Authority Chairman of Congress Madhusudan Mistry.
- Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to vote at the AICC headquarters; Rahul Gandhi to vote at the Bharat Jodo Yatra campsite in Karnataka’s Sanganakallu along with around 40 other delegates marching with him.
- Tharoor to vote at the Kerala Congress headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram; Kharge at Karnataka PCC office in Bengaluru
- Ballot boxes will reach Delhi on Oct 18, counting of votes on October 19
- Sealed ballot boxes will be transported to Delhi and kept in a strong room at the AICC headquarters.
- The ballot papers will be mixed before counting starts so that no one will know how many votes the candidate got from a particular state
- The last electoral contest for the Congress president post was in 2000 when Jitendra Prasada had unsuccessfully challenged Sonia Gandhi.
- Shashi Tharoor was the first to declare his intent to run in the election; Kharge’s nomination was a late decision, coming after Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot backed out over discontent in the state party unit.
- The Congress is now in power in only three states- Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and as a coalition partner in Jharkhand.
The campaigns
The run-up to the election was not without its share of controversies.
Kharge’s campaign saw several senior leaders, PCC chiefs and top leaders receiving him at the state headquarters visited by him. Tharoor was mostly welcomed by young PCC delegates with PCC chiefs mostly absent from his events, causing him to allege lack of a “level playing field.”
Tharoor sought support on the plank of changes in the manner in which the party is being run, while calling Kharge “candidate of continuity.”
The Gandhis though, have distanced themselves from the controversy, with Sonia Gandhi saying the family was “neutral” in the matter.