The training of the Nehru-Gandhi family elected Mallikarjun Kharge, a veteran of the 80-year-old policy. Its mission is to put in battle in order a delicate party for the general elections of 2024.
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The members of the Congress Party awaited this long -standing election. When the results were announced, the activists present at the party’s headquarters in New Delhi, briefly let their joy explode. The victory of the octogenarian Mallikarjun Kharge, Wednesday, October 19, president of the main Indian opposition party, ends a leadership crisis over three years. Mr. Kharge, the favorite, won the competition with more than 84 % of the votes against the very media Shashi Tharoor, writer and former diplomat with the United Nations.
Huge challenges are waiting for it now. 80 years old, this veteran of politics must put a tattered party in battle in order, with the general elections of 2024. The training of the center left, which has governed India for decades since the Independence, did not resist the compressor roller of the Hindu nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who came to power in 2014. The Congress Party has only 53 seats out of 543 elected officials at Lok Sabha, the lower room of Parliament , and he has lost 39 of the 49 regional elections since 2014. These poor performances have pushed high -ranking frames and figures of the new generation to slam the door.
For the first time in twenty-four years, the party has dismissed the Gandhi family from its leadership, which should nevertheless continue to play an essential role behind the scenes. A militant from the base, Mallikarjun Kharge is a member of the Dalit community, formerly called “untouchable” and considered to be at the bottom of the hierarchy imposed by the caste system. He succeeds Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (1984-1989) murdered in 1991, who assured the interim of the presidency since the resignation of his son, Rahul, in 2019.
The latter had thrown in the towel after the second scathing defeat inflicted on his party by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and the BJP in the legislative elections. The famous dynasty, which has no relationship with the Mahatma Gandhi, has provided India three of its Prime Ministers since independence: Jawaharlal Nehru, independence craftsman, his daughter Indira Gandhi, murdered in 1984, and his grandson Rajiv, the father of Rahul Gandhi.
“Vote of continuity”
“The election of Mallikarjun Kharge is a vote of continuity because it is perceived and presented as a loyal support of the Gandhi family, which remains the symbolic head of the party”, underlines Gilles Verniers, professor of political science at the Ashoka University, in the suburbs of New Delhi. “A new missed opportunity”, judges for his part, under the seal of anonymity, a former member of the party who “no longer saw a future in a party incapable of finding a way to beat the BJP”.
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