Members of the Congress Party have been waiting for this election for a long time. When the results were announced, the activists present at the party’s headquarters in New Delhi were momentarily excited. Eight-year-old Mallikarjun Kharge’s victory, Wednesday 19 October, with the presidency of India’s main opposition party, ended a leadership crisis of more than three years. Kharge, the favourite, won the competition with more than 84% of the vote against Shashi Tharoor, a media-savvy former UN diplomat and writer.

A great challenge now awaits him. The 80-year-old veteran politician must get the battered party back on track, with the 2024 general election just around the corner. The centre-left party, which has ruled India for decades since independence, is not against the Hindu nationalist movement in India. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came to power in 2014. The Congress Party now has only 53 seats out of the 543 seats voted for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, and has lost 39 of 49 regional elections since 2014 This poor performance has led to executives high-ranking and new-generation figures slammed the door.

For the first time in twenty-four years, the party has dethroned the Gandhi family, who must nevertheless continue to play an important role behind the scenes. A grassroots activist, Mallikarjun Kharge is a member of the Dalit community, once called “untouchables” and considered to be below the hierarchy imposed by the caste system. She succeeds Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (1984-1989) who was assassinated in 1991, who has served as interim president since the resignation of her son, Rahul, in 2019.

The latter has succumbed after the second bitter defeat inflicted on his party by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in the legislative elections. The famous dynasty, unrelated to Mahatma Gandhi, has given India three prime ministers since independence: Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of independence, his daughter Indira Gandhi, assassinated in 1984, and his grandson Rajiv, the father of Rahul Gandhi.

“Sustainable Sound”

“The election of Mallikarjun Kharge was an ongoing vote as he was regarded and presented as a staunch supporter of the Gandhi family, who remain the symbolic party head”said Gilles Verniers, professor of political science at Ashoka University, on the outskirts of New Delhi. “New missed opportunity”judge for his part, under the seal of anonymity, a former member of the party who “sees more of the future in a party that can’t find a way to beat the BJP”.

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