- Wednesday, April 24, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Senior Indian National Congress parliamentarian Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday (19) emerged winner of the election which was held on Monday (17) to pick the new president of the century-old party.
The 80-year-old defeated Shashi Tharoor, also a parliamentarian, in what was reported to be a lop-sided victory. The latter conceded defeat and wished Kharge luck.
Kharge reportedly bagged 7,897 out of 9,385 votes cast in the election while Tharoor got around 1,072. Four-hundred and sixteen votes were deemed invalid.
With his win, Kharge became the first member from outside the Gandhi family, which has traditionally dominated the Congress, to become the party’s president in 24 years. Sitaram Kesri was the last non-Gandhi to serve as the president between 1996 and 1998 when current interim president Sonia Gandhi took over as the president. She continued till 2017 when Rahul Gandhi succeeded her but quit in less than two years after the party’s debacle in the 2019 general elections when Sonia returned as the interim chief.
Kharge, who has served in various positions in the party, parliament, and the government, is a popular face of India’s grand-old party. He has been one of the Congress’s frontline faces after it was defeated in the 2014 general elections that saw Narendra Modi emerging as the prime minister.
Born in the present-day Bidar district of the southern state of Karnataka on July 21, 1942, Kharge did his schooling in Gulbarga in the state and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and law degree. He started practice as a junior worker in the office of the Indian judge, Justice Shivraj Patil, and fought cases for labour unions in the early years of his legal career.
He started his political career as a student union leader during his college days when he was elected as the general secretary of the students’ body. In 1969, he became the legal advisor to a workers’ union. He was also an influential labour union leader of Samyukta Majdoor Sangha and took part in many agitations for labourers’ rights. In 1969, he joined the Congress and became the chief of the Gulbarga City Congress Committee.
Kharge’s rise in politics started from his state where he contested the assembly elections in 1972 and won. He served as a member of Karnataka state assembly between 1972 and 2008 and 2008-09 and in that period, he carried out responsibility in departments such as home affairs and rural development. He has also been the leader of the opposition in the Karnataka assembly.
Between 2005 and 2008, Kharge was the chief of the Karnataka unit of the Congress.
In 2009, Kharge contested the national election and won. He remained a member of the Lok Sabha or the Lower House of the Indian parliament between 2009 and 2019 when he served as minister of labour and employment and railways in the government of Manmohan Singh. He was the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha between 2014 and 2019, when Modi served his first term.
Kharge was the chairman of the public accounts committee of the Indian parliament between 2016 and 2019.
He took charge as the general secretary of the All India Congress Committee and the party’s Maharashtra chapter between 2018 and 2020.
Since 2020, Kharge is representing his state in the Rajya Sabha or the Upper House of the parliament.
