New Delhi: The official candidates for the post of next Congress president would be known only when the nominations close but the person having "blessings" of the Gandhi family would have an edge, party insiders said.
“Both Ashok Gehlot and Shashi Tharoor are strong candidates and there may be more but only the person having the blessings of the Gandhi family would go to the top,” a senior AICC functionary said on condition of anonymity. “The Gandhi family has huge influence across the party and the workers look up to them for leadership. People would get the cue whom the family prefers before the polls,” he said.
According to party insiders, the process to elect the next party chief is on and clarity on the candidates would emerge after the nominations from September 24 to 30. Polling would be held on October 17. A contest, said party insiders, has become likely given Rahul Gandhi’s reluctance to file his papers.
Within the party circles, the names of Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor are being debated as probable contestants. According to sources, if Tharoor files his papers, a section of the party leaders opposed to the Lok Sabha MP may become active and push Gehlot to contest against him. However, the party leaders are not in the mood to take sides at this stage.
Lok Sabha MP Pradyot Bordoloi, who had asked the Central Election Authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry to publish the electoral rolls before the nominations to ensure transparency, along with Tharoor and three other MPs, refused to comment on the Gehlot vs Tharoor contest.
Also read: Cong prez polls: Vote only for those who accept Nehru family, says Kerala MP
“This is media speculation. I would like to wait till the nominations are over. Once I know who the official candidates are, then only I can take sides,” Bordoloi told ETV Bharat. “It is better not to comment on the issue till the nominations are over,” AICC general secretary in charge of Madhya Pradesh, JP Agarwal told this channel.
Yet, the Gehlot vs Tharoor contest is being discussed within Congress circles. Those who favour Gehlot, 71, point out that he is a veteran who has risen from the ranks. Gehlot has been in the party for over four decades working in the student wings NSUI and Youth Congress and later became an MLA, PCC chief, union minister, an AICC general secretary and chief minister.
Further, Gehlot is a mass leader who has a deep understanding of organizational matters and has a good equation with most state leaders. On the other hand, those who favour Tharoor, 66, argue that though the candidate is not considered to be a mass leader in his home state Kerala, he is serving a third consecutive term as a Lok Sabha member from Thiruvananthapuram.
Besides, Tharoor has published 23 books so far, is well known within the country and abroad as a scholar and also served as minister of state for external affairs and minister of state for human resource development in the previous UPA government. Before that, he had a distinguished career as an Under Secretary General at the United Nations.
In 2006, Tharoor was India’s official nominee in the high-profile elections for the post of UN Secretary-General. He lost to South Korea’s Ban-ki Moon. Interestingly, Gehlot is a known Gandhi family loyalist. He has worked with former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi and was one of the few who had pleaded with Sonia Gandhi in 1996 to join active politics when she was reluctant to lead the Congress.
Also read: Tharoor, Gehlot emerge probables for Congress prez if Rahul Gandhi declines
After consistent requests, Sonia Gandhi finally took charge of the party in 1998 and was elected party president in 2000. Though Tharoor is in the good books of both Sonia and Rahul, he was one of the signatories to the 2020 letter that 23 senior leaders wrote to Sonia Gandhi demanding a thorough revamp of the organization via internal elections for all party posts, including that of the Congress president so a full-time, visible chief could steer the grand old party.
The G23 leader Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from the party on August 26, at a time when Sonia was abroad for a medical check-up and was accompanied by her children Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
For many in the party, this was akin to stabbing in the back. Subsequently, Tharoor’s letter demanding the publishing of electoral rolls for the party president pols and pushing of a petition urging all contestants for the top party post to pledge that they will implement the Udaipur Declaration within 100 days, had surprised many in the party.
When Sonia Gandhi gave a ticket for the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat to Tharoor in 2009, many in the state unit were against him, but the leadership overlooked their complaints. Later, Tharoor was given key ministerial berths in the Manmohan Singh cabinet, despite reservations from a section of the party leaders, said the insiders.
