96% turnout for election to top post: Congress

Among the other early voters at the 24, Akbar Road, party headquarters were an ailing former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Sonia’s daughter and AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi voted at a specially set-up booth at the Bharat Jodo Yatra campsite in Sanganakallu in Karnataka’s Ballari.

Of the 9,915 PCC delegates, 9,497 cast their votes across state capitals, including 87 at the AICC headquarters and 50 at the Yatra campsite, said Madhusudan Mistry, who is heading the party’s Central Election Authority (CEA).

Kharge voted in Bengaluru and Tharoor in Thiruvananthapuram, both at PCC offices. Minutes before voting began, Tharoor rang up Kharge to convey his wishes.

While disclosing for the first time the number of PCC delegates who were eligible to vote, Mistry said the turnout figures were provisional and could be revised. He also confirmed that the ballot boxes would be brought to Delhi where the papers would be mixed before counting to ensure secrecy.

The Kharge camp remained supremely confident of victory. The Tharoor campaign said there was a “very strong groundswell of support” in his favour and that they had noticed a “greater than expected” level of excitement over his candidature in the final campaign leg.

Mistry said the elections were an open process and held in a peaceful manner. “The Congress party has shown what internal democracy is and other parties that want to take a lesson from it, can do so,” he said.

Mistry also played down charges from the Tharoor camp that there was lack of a level playing field, in reference to senior leaders expressing support for Kharge, the unofficial official candidate.

“When it comes to level playing field, there are some things that affect, which we rectify immediately. There were certain complaints, which were related to the behaviour of the voter. If I like you, I will go to your meeting… if I don’t like, I will not go to your meeting… there, the CEA has no role. The CEA can’t force you to go to ‘X’ meeting and ‘Y’ meeting,” he said.

After polling started at 10 am, the first voter at the AICC headquarters was former Union minister and CWC member P Chidambaram, followed by Jairam Ramesh. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot cast his vote at the party headquarters in Jaipur, and his Chhattisgarh counterpart Bhupesh Baghel at the PCC office in Raipur.

The Congress is witnessing an election to the post of party president after 22 years. The last non-Gandhi Congress president was Sitaram Kesri, from whom Sonia Gandhi took over in March 1998. The last such contest was in 2000 when Jitendra Prasada faced off with Sonia Gandhi, two years into her presidency.

In 2017, Sonia handed over the mantle to Rahul Gandhi but he stepped down two years later in the wake of the party’s humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha elections.