As Congress votes to elect President, Shashi Tharoor says party’s future with workers who vote

Tharoor also said Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had messaged him Monday morning to say the election to choose the Congress president has benefited the party and that she also thanked him. “That is what we want to know. Now, people have a feeling that there is some mobility in the party. With regard to the stand of the Gandhi family, I have been told right from the beginning that they are impartial in the presidential elections,’’ he said.

“It has been 22 years since the presidential election was held in the party. Hence, the election has got its own problems. I think within the last 16 days I could take my message to the maximum number of party workers,” he added.

While party veteran Mallikarjun Kharge, 80, has been considered the Gandhi family’s ‘unofficial official candidate’ with a large number of senior leaders backing him, Tharoor pitched himself as the candidate of change.

This will be the sixth time in its nearly 137-year-old history that an electoral contest would decide who would take up the mantle of the party’s president. Tharoor has faced an uphill task in his home state Kerala, where most of the senior leaders stood with Kharge.

The result of the Congress presidential polls will be declared on Wednesday, October 19.