History beckons as Cong gears up for 6th contest for party chief

New Delhi: With the Congress set to vote to elect its new chief, it would be the sixth time in its nearly 137-yearold history that an electoral contest would decide who would take up the mantle of the party’s president. Asked about the significance of the polls, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh told PTI, “This is actually the sixth time that the Congress is having internal elections for its president in its 137-year-history.” “The media has highlighted 1939, 1950, 1997 and 2000. In fact, there had been elections too in 1977 when Kasu Brahmananda Reddy was elected,” he pointed out. It was way back in 1939, when an electoral contest decided who would be Congress president and in fact, Mahatma Gandhi’s candidate P Sitaramayya had lost to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Then in 1950 came the Congress’ first election post-Independence for the post of party president when Purshotttam Das Tandon and Acharya Kripalani faced off for the top post. Surprisingly, Tandon, seen as a Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel loyalist, had won the contest trumping the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru’s choice.

In 1977, following the resignation of Dev Kant Barooah as party president in the wake of the defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, K Brahmananda Reddy defeated Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Karan Singh in the party’s polls for AICC chief. The next election that needed a contest came 20 years later in 1997 when Sitaram Kesri squared off in a triangular contest with Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot. Except for Maharashtra and parts of Uttar Pradesh, all state Congress units had backed Kesri. He had posted a landslide victory getting 6,224 delegates’ votes against Pawar’s 882 and Pilot’s 354. The third contest came in 2000 and this was the only time a Gandhi family member was challenged in the elections with Jitendra Prasada taking on Sonia Gandhi. Prasada suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Sonia who garnered over 7,400 votes, while Prasada polled a paltry 94. The upcoming polls would certainly be historic as the new president would replace Sonia Gandhi, the longestserving party president who has been at the helm since 1998, barring the 2 years between 2017 & 2019 when Rahul Gandhi took over. —PTI