Congress President polls Live Updates: Told Shashi Tharoor to have consensus candidate, but he wanted to contest, says Mallikarjun Kharge

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor files his nomination papers for the post of party president, at AICC headquarters in New Delhi, September 30, 2022. (Express photo by Anil Sharma)

The Tharoor manifesto: Reimagining Congress high command’s role, real authority for PCC chiefs

Shashi Tharoor’s chances of being the next Congress president may have taken a hit after Mallikarjun Kharge entered the fray as the Gandhis’ unofficial choice but the MP from Thiruvananthapuram is going all out to do his bit to ensure he stands a chance to cause an upset.

After filing his nomination papers on Friday, Tharoor released a manifesto positioning himself as the Congress’s future. Using the tagline “Think tomorrow, think Tharoor”, he detailed 10 tenets for revitalising the party, among them decentralising the organisation by “giving real authority to the PCC (Pradesh Congress Committee) presidents” and reimagining the role of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters. Among the other internal changes that he has proposed are limiting party president and other office-bearer posts to two five-year terms and organising elections to 12 posts out of 23 in the Congress Working Committee (CWC).

Mallikarjun Kharge spent the day meeting leaders, including A K Antony who he called on at the Kerala House in Delhi. A day after all nominations were filed for the Congress president election, the stage was set for a straight contest between veteran Kharge and Tharoor after the nomination of former Jharkhand minister K N Tripathi was rejected. Madhusudan Mistry, the head of the Congress’s central election authority, announced that Tripathi’s form has been rejected — as some of the signatures didn’t match.