Ritika
Congress Presidential Election Race: Congress Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor met party President Sonia Gandhi on 19 September. After this meeting, he got approval to contest for the post of President of the organization. Earlier, Gehlot’s candidature for the post came into the limelight after meeting Sonia Gandhi on 23 August. It also became clear that there would be a contest between Tharoor and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot for the post of party president. Provided that no one from the Nehru-Gandhi family contests elections, if he agrees to occupy the post of president, then no one will come against him, it is also certain.
Nehru-Gandhi’s successor Rahul Gandhi has not yet made it clear whether he will contest the elections to be held on October 17. There are also speculations within the party that Rahul Gandhi has no intention of contesting for the post of President. Rahul Gandhi is on India Jodo Yatra from 7 September. So far in his journey, he has not given any clear statement about his candidature for the post of party president. If Rahul gets out of this race, then there is every possibility of a contest between Gehlot and Tharoor. The election process for the post of Congress President will start from September 24. By the end of this month, candidates can start filing their nominations. However, the real picture of this important election will come out on 30 September. For now, this election seems to be a Gehlot-Tharoor affair. If there is a contest between these two veteran Congress leaders, then these five reasons are making Gehlot’s upper hand.
Trustees of the Nehru-Gandhi family
Gehlot is considered loyal and trustworthy of Nehru-Gandhi. Both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi consult him in important matters. When in June, Rahul Gandhi was called by the Enforcement Directorate-ED for five days and 50 hours. Ashok Gehlot was the one who opposed it most vocally. He played an active role in the party’s protests against Rahul being called to the ED for three days in June and Sonia Gandhi in July. These CMs of Rajasthan had come on the road in the protests. He was also detained several times during the protests.
He undertook to defend Sonia Gandhi and Rahul and held several press conferences in Delhi. Apart from being the chief minister of Rajasthan, he is also a senior observer of Gujarat, where assembly elections are due in the next few months. Tharoor, on the other hand, is not known as a loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family. He is seen as a disgruntled and hostile leader. Tharoor is one of the 23 Congress leaders known as G-23. He wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi in the year 2020. In which there was a demand for internal-party reforms at the top level and transparency in decision-making.
Long experience in running government
Ashok Gehlot is a staunch Congressman and has a long political background. He has been elected to the Lok Sabha five times. He contested the first Lok Sabha election in 1980 from Jodhpur. Gehlot has also been an MLA for five times. He has also been the General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee. As far as Shashi Tharoor is concerned, after joining the party in 2009, he is a relatively new member in the Congress as compared to Gehlot. He is a three-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala continuously since 2009. He is also the President of All India Professionals Congress (AIPC). Ashok Gehlot has a lot of experience in running the government. The hallmark of his administrative experience is that he was a Union Minister thrice. He was also in the cabinet of three Congress Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and PV Narasimha Rao. Not only this, he is also a three-time CM.
If we consider Tharoor’s political innings as compared to Gehlot, he has been a Union Minister twice and that too for a very short time. Tharoor, who has written 23 books, may have been a top-class writer, but he lags behind Gehlot in the study of politics. He was the Minister of State for External Affairs (MoS) from 23 May 2009 to 18 April 2010. After this, from 28 October 2012 to May 2014, he was the Minister of State for Human Resource Development. Tharoor served in the United Nations in several positions for 29 years from 1978-2007. In one of these, he also held the post of Under Secretary General. In 2006, Tharoor contested elections to succeed Kofi Annan for the post of UN Secretary General. South Korea’s Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon withdrew his nomination as the preferred candidate for the five permanent members of the Security Council with veto power.
Gehlot is a seasoned political strategist
It is believed that Ashok Gehlot has the support of the Nehru-Gandhi family. He has been a favorite of this family for a very long time. Its hallmark was seen in the Rajasthan Assembly elections in the year 2018. Then the Congress contested the election in this state with Gehlot’s rival State President (PCC) Sachin Pilot. Then Sachin Pilot won Tonk and Ashok Gehlot won Sardarpura seat. In the same year, the Congress party contested elections here along with Madhya Pradesh’s PCC Kamal Nath. Then the Congress had chosen Kamal Nath to lead the government in MP, but when Sachin Pilot staked claim to form the government in Rajasthan, the party ignored his claim and handed over the CM command to his rival Gehlot. It was Gehlot’s strategy that in the year 2018, instead of Sachin Pilot, the face of the young CM, he was given the post of CM.
Gehlot has a direct connection with the workers
Even at present, the top leadership of the party is pressurizing Gehlot to contest for the post of party president. Therefore, it can be expected that the veteran Gehlot will hold the edge between Gehlot and Tharoor, as the support of most of the 9,000 delegates eligible to vote for the post of Speaker is likely to go in Gehlot’s favour. The Nehru-Gandhi family has majority support in the party. To know the reason for this, one has to look at the 1946 elections for the post of Congress President 76 years ago. Gandhi was not a member of the party at that time. Even after this, his role was very important. Then the contest was between Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru. Sardar Patel withdrew his nomination, respecting Bapu’s order and wish. Then, bypassing the majority in this election, Pandit Nehru was elected as the President instead of Patel. Since then, the meaning of Congress is taken from the Nehru-Gandhi family. This is the reason that in the tradition that has been going on for 76 years, the name of anyone other than the Nehru-Gandhi family is rarely accepted for the post of president.
The resolution passed by eight Pradesh Congress Committees-PCCs to appoint Rahul Gandhi as the President of the party is living proof of this. These PCCs are West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat. In fact, the PCC was directed to pass a resolution authorizing the Congress President to appoint the PCC President and nominate representatives of the All India Congress Committee (AICC).
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While Ashok Gehlot is the king of impeccable image as a leader, Shashi Tharoor has brought himself into the fringes of controversies with many statements and deeds. One such controversy is of the year 2010. Tharoor was then accused of abusing his position to buy shares in the IPL cricket franchise. Because of this, he had to resign from the post of Union Minister in April 2010. After this, in January 2014, he also came under the scanner due to the mysterious death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar in a hotel in Delhi. He was accused of abetting his wife Sunanda’s suicide and her adopting a cruel attitude towards his wife after marriage. However, in August 2021, he was acquitted of all these charges.
Tharoor has also been very famous on social media. He has 8.3 million followers on Twitter, but Tharoor’s tweets, which have been brimming with controversy, have also been known to create controversy over and over again. In the year 2013, his name is the title of the Indian politician with the most followers. Later his record was broken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. One of his similar controversial tweets was the tweet of 26 November 2021. She had made a tweet from her Twitter handle with 6 fellow women Lok Sabha MPs, after which she was criticized. People had raised a lot of objection to Shashi Tharoor’s words.
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