After days of turmoil, the Congress’ first family has finally turned to its “Man Friday” Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge to settle the issue of party president. Popularly known as "Solillada Saradara" (a leader without defeat) in his home-State of Karnataka, Kharge is a hardcore loyalist of the Gandhi family and has often been deputed to solve many a crisis hitting the party. If elected, he will be the second AICC president from Karnataka after S Nijalingappa, and the second Dalit leader to hold the post after Jagjivan Ram.
With the Group of 23 Congress leaders, who had been seeking a complete rehaul of the party and a non-Gandhi as the president given Rahul Gandhi’s reluctance, backing his nomination for the top post publicly, it is expected to give the experienced leader breathing space to put the disarrayed house in order that led to the exit of the likes of Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kapil Sibal, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Sushmita Dev, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitendra Prasad and Amariinder Singh among others. A hardcore Congressman, Kharge has played multiple roles in different ministries that have enriched his experience as an administrator.
The Congress, which started its ambitious Bharat Jodo Yatra from Tamil Nadu, is attempting to consolidate the party’s strength in south India where BJP-ruled Karnataka is going to polls in the next few months. A bigger test with Assembly polls in a dozen-odd States in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections would await him. In June 2020, he was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka, and is currently the 17th Leader of the Opposition in Upper House.
A leader with more than 50 years of experience in politics, Kharge, who was elected MLA for nine times in a row, has seen a steady rise in his career graph from humble beginnings as a union leader in his home-district of Kalaburagi. In 1969, he joined the Indian National Congress and went on to become president of the Gulbarga City Congress Committee. Kharge has served as Union Cabinet Ministers for Labour and Employment, Railways and Social Justice and Empowerment in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA Government.
Kharge’s contender Shashi Tharoor is a former Union Minister and tree-term MP but has remained mostly in controversies which also cost him his ministry once. In fact, the bestseller author, wordsmith, former UN diplomat and social media ‘pioneer' with 8.3 million followers has demonstrated he is quite the opposite of a ‘quockerwodger', a politically loaded term for a wooden puppet, and is instead independent minded, and backs changes in the party.
Born in London in 1956, Tharoor graduated with an honours in history from Delhi's prestigious St Stephen's College where he was also the president of the student's union. He did his masters from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford, US, and completed a PhD from there in 1978. Defying the politician stereotype, Tharoor went on to have a distinguished career in the UN. During his stint at the UN, he shouldered several key responsibilities in peace-keeping after the Cold War and serving as senior adviser to the secretary-general, in addition to his role as under-secretary general for Communications and Public Information.
Tharoor, who was chosen as India's official candidate for the post of secretary general, finished second of seven candidates in the 2006 election, which was won by former South Korean diplomat and politician Ban Ki-moon.
Though his political journey began at 53, he took giant strides as a politician after winning the Lok Sabha election. His candidacy was opposed by a section of leaders of the Kerala Congress who viewed him as an outsider. Tharoor, however, won by a comfortable margin over his nearest opponent from the Communist Party of India.
In July 2020, Tharoor crossed a milestone by becoming the longest-serving parliamentarian representing the Thiruvanan-thapuram Lok Sabha constituency. Among the best orators in the House, Tharoor’s move to contest the polls will undoubtedly make him a household name in India, something that will keep him in good stead.