Kharge Likely to Contest Congress President Election, After Late Call With Sonia

Kharge's candidature is said to have been finalised after a phone conversation with Sonia Gandhi late on Thursday.

Senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge is likely to file his nomination for the Congress president's election on Friday, 30 September, sources in the Congress told The Quint.

Kharge's name was finalised after a phone call with interim Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, late on Thursday evening.

A source close to Rahul Gandhi confirmed that the former party president is also in support of Kharge's candidature.

While Kharge was always in the fray as one of the potential candidates who might contest with the Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi's tacit backing, sources told The Quint that his name was effectively confirmed by Sonia Gandhi only late on Thursday.

This happened after a great deal of back and forth between Sonia Gandhi and a few other candidates she had in mind, including Mukul Wasnik and Kumari Selja.

This took place after Gandhi's meeting with Rajasthan leader Sachin Pilot.

"Kharge was always in the reckoning but there were doubts due to his age and current responsibility as Leader of Opposition (in the Rajya Sabha). But when Mukul Wasnik expressed his reluctance, Kharge's name became more or less final," a senior party leader from a Southern state revealed.

Kharge, on his part, has been maintaining that he is open to taking up any responsibility given by the party though he has always been a strong votary of Rahul Gandhi returning as Congress president.

Kharge may be the third candidate in the presidential election, with Shashi Tharoor and Digvijaya Singh also collecting their nomination forms.

There may also be another candidate from the G-23 grouping. Four of its leaders - Anand Sharma, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Prithviraj Chavan and Manish Tewari met late on Thursday but couldn't arrive at a consensus on which one of them should be contesting.

A Veteran Who Has Won 11 Elections

Now 80 years of age, Kharge is a Dalit from Bidar district in Karnataka. He began his career as a student leader in the 1960s and won his first Assembly election from Gurmitkal constituency in Kalaburgi district (then Gulbarga).

He went on to win nine Assembly elections in Karnataka and became a minister several times, holding departments such as revenue and home.

In 2009 , he won the Lok Sabha election from the Gulbarga constituency and became a minister in the Manmohan Singh government holding the Labour portfolio first and subsequently railways.

He won again in 2014 became the Congress' leader in the Lok Sabha. He lost in 2019 but was sent to the Rajya Sabha where he became Leader of the Opposition in 2021.