New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday elected Mallikarjun Kharge as its president, the first non-Gandhi to head the party in 24 years at a time the 137-year-old party is struggling to reverse its slide in the country’s electoral politics.
A staunch Gandhi family loyalist from Karnataka, the 80-year-old leader defeated Shashi Tharoor in an electoral contest by bagging nearly 84 per cent of votes in the party presidential election.
Kharge got 7,897 votes and Tharoor 1,072 votes, while 416 votes were declared invalid, Congress' central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry said at a press conference at the AICC headquarters here.
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