Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge, a devoted follower of the Gandhi family from Karnataka, was elected as the first non-Gandhi president of the Congress in 24 years.
The 80-year-old leader takes over Sonia Gandhi’s position as head of the grand old party.
Shashi Tharoor, a member of parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, lost to Kharge in the Congress’ presidential vote on October 17; more than 9,500 delegates from throughout the nation participated in the election.
He is a politician with more than 50 years of experience, the second AICC President from Karnataka after S. Nijalingappa, and the second Dalit man to hold the position after Jagjivan Ram.
Kharge, who began his career in modest circumstances as a union leader in his home district of Gulbarga, was elected an MLA nine times in a row (renamed as Kalaburagi).
After becoming a member of the party in 1969, he rose to the position of Gulbarga City Congress Committee President.
Kharge’s invincibility at the polls persisted until the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when he defied the Narendra Modi wave that swept Karnataka, especially the Hyderabad-Karnataka region, and won from Gulbarga by a margin of more than 20,000 votes.
Before entering the Lok Sabha election field in 2009, he won nine times from the Gurmitkal assembly constituency and served two terms as a member of parliament for the Gulbarga constituency.
The senior politician was, however, defeated by Umesh Jadhav of the BJP in Gulbarga in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections by a margin of 95,452 votes.
This was the first election setback for Kharge, who is renowned as “solillada Saradara” (a leader without defeat) and has been involved in politics for more than 50 years.
Kharge is a feisty Congressman who is fiercely devoted to the Gandhi family. His experience as an administrator is enhanced by the variety of jobs he has held in several ministries.
Additionally, he has held the positions of president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee and opposition leader in the Karnataka Assembly.
Between 2014 and 2019, Kharge served as the Lok Sabha leader of the Congress party. However, the grand old party was unable to secure the position because it did not have the required 10% of seats in the Lower House.
During the Manmohan Singh-led UPA administration, he held the positions of Union Cabinet Minister for Labor and Employment, Railways, and Social Justice and Empowerment.
Additionally, he had occupied a number of responsibilities in the state’s consecutive Congress governments.