A run for the race, Shashi Tharoor or Ashok Gehlot will be voted in by over 9,000 Pradesh Congress Committee delegates.
Both leaders are total opposites and speculations are rising as they are contesting the Congress Presidential election in 2022. Ashok Gehlot, 71-year-old, a grassroots politician connected with the Congress from his student days, a mass leader, a diplomat always falling in line with the Gandhis, Gehlot rose through the ranks of the party, starting from his NSUI days as a student leader and slowly working up the ladder. Tharoor is a 66-year-old outspoken Shashi Tharoor – eloquent, literary, and sophisticated known for speaking his mind who joined the Congress in 2009 after a lengthy stint at the United Nations.
While Ashok Gehlot has shown he can outwit his rivals with his political stunts, an old-time politician who likes doing things the traditional way and is a master at realpolitik while Shashi Tharoor plays with powerful words to make his points and sway thoughts driven by innovation and novel ideas and the winner of the game will be known by October 19th.
Both are powerful leaders with very different backgrounds, where Ashok Gehlot was born to Babu Laxman Singh Daksh, who was a professional magician and used to travel to different cities to perform and Shashi Tharoor was born in London and had a distinctive educational background.
Gehlot was NSUI’s Rajasthan president from 1974 to 1979 and went on to become the Jodhpur City Congress Committee president from 1979 to 1982. He was then elevated as the state Congress committee’s general secretary.
He was first elected to Parliament in 1980 and went on to win Lok Sabha elections four more times. At the Centre, Gehlot served as a minister of state in the ministries of tourism, civil aviation, sports, and textiles, in different stints between 1982 and 1993.
Since 1999, he has represented the Sardarpura assembly constituency in Rajasthan, winning five consecutive terms in the House.
On the other hand, Tharoor entered politics after he announced his retirement following his second-place finish in the 2006 selection for UN Secretary-General to Ban Ki-moon, and was elected to Parliament in 2009.
He has been a very active parliamentarian and has won three Lok Sabha elections on the trot from Thiruvananthapuram, but has not served on party organizational posts, while Gehlot is a veteran who has also served as AICC general secretary in-charge organization.
Gehlot is not considered as effective a communicator as Tharoor who has a reputation of being a formidable orator when speaking in English and is quickly picking up Hindi too.
While Gehlot’s popularity is more among farmers and low-income groups, Tharoor’s popularity is high among the middle and upper classes.
As nominations for the Congress president began yesterday, the nomination papers can be filed till 30 September with results to be announced on 19 October. Also, with Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra deciding not to be in the running for the party president’s post, a non-Gandhi would be at the helm after over 24 years. As Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has already announced his candidature, Thiruvananthapuram MP and former union minister Shashi Tharoor also made his intentions clear by getting the nomination forms collected on Saturday and will fill nomination for the post on 30 September.
According to a notification issued by the party on Thursday, the process for filing nominations for the Congress presidential election will be held from September 24 to 30. The date for scrutiny of the nomination papers is October 1, while the last date for withdrawal of nominations is October 8.
The final list of candidates will be published at 5 pm on October 8.
The polling, if needed, will be held on October 17. The counting of votes will be taken up on October 19 and the results will be declared the same day.
More than 9,000 Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates will vote in the poll. The upcoming polls would certainly be historic as the new president would replace Sonia Gandhi, the longest-serving party president who has been at the helm since 1998, except for the two years between 2017 and 2019 when Rahul Gandhi took over.
In the post-Independence era, a person from the Gandhi family has been at the helm of the party for about 40 years in total. After Independence, the party has been led by 16 people so far, of which five have been presidents from the Gandhi family.
Crisis in Rajasthan
In the middle of all this, it is thought that Sachin Pilot may replace Ashok Gehlot as Rajasthan CM and Congress calls an emergency meeting amid presidential elections.
According to party sources, the name of Congress leader Sachin Pilot is the front runner, but Rajasthan Assembly Speaker C P Joshi’s name is also being taken.
The infighting has surfaced again over CM’s post. Who will be the next Rajasthan chief minister if Ashok Gehlot is elected as the Congress chief next month in the presidential elections? The question – which was presumed to be the focus of a Congress legislature party meet on Sunday evening – seems to have triggered a fresh spell of infighting for the ruling party in the state. More than 80 MLAs – all said to be loyalists of Ashok Gehlot – are reported to have submitted their resignations on Sunday night to Assembly Speaker CP Joshi. Is it an indirrect attempt to sabotage the Rajasthan government and bring BJP into power? Is there no space and maturity to accept another Congress leader as chief minister?