Congress presidential polls: Some aspects suggest uneven playing field, says Shashi Tharoor

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday said that some aspects of the election process for the post of the party president suggested an uneven playing field, NDTV reported.

The former Union minister, however, claimed that the Gandhi family is neutral in the contest.

The election to decide the successor to the longest-serving party president Sonia Gandhi will take place on October 17 and the results will be announced two days later. Tharoor will compete in the election against former Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge.

“There are certainly aspects that imply an uneven playing field,” Tharoor said on Sunday. He also reportedly claimed that some leaders told him that they were “under pressure” to support Kharge.

“So, the fact is, I am assuming that there’s no official candidate,” the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram said. “But you are right in your question that some people in the party are implying otherwise and trying to influence voters with that theory.”

Tharoor said that he had always expected that there would be a senior leader in the contest, and that the establishment would rally behind such a person. “And that’s apparent with the signatures collected on his [Kharge’s] nomination form, the people who accompanied him to submit it and the behaviour of party colleagues on the campaign trail,” he told NDTV.

On September 30, ten Congress leaders – AK Antony, Ashok Gehlot, Ambika Soni, Mukul Wasnik, Anand Sharma, Abhishek Singhvi, Ajay Maken, Bhupinder Hooda, Digvijaya Singh and Tariq Anwar – signed as proposers for Kharge.

Tharoor on Sunday said that there has been a vast difference between how he was received by ordinary party workers, as compared to how Kharge was received by party office-bearers during his campaign.

“Wherever Mr Kharge goes, there are grandees of the Congress greeting him, garlanding him... whereas wherever I go, there are ordinary karyakartas [workers], simple folks who haven’t received any such instruction,” the Congress MP said.

Tharoor, however, claimed that Sonia Gandhi and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi were not supporting any candidate in the election.

“The Gandhi family has made it very clear, also through the chief election authority Mr [Madhusudan] Mistry, that there’s no official candidate,” he said. “The Gandhi family is neutral in this race. And, Mistry added, if anybody goes around saying otherwise, it is not true. And he said it twice.”

On October 7, the Thiruvananthapuram MP had said that no senior party leaders were present at an event that he attended in Tamil Nadu as part of his campaign. He, however, added that he received a warm welcome there from Congress workers.

“At the ensuing press conference, media alleged that office-bearers were told to stay away,” Tharoor wrote on Twitter. “Interestingly dozens of ordinary citizens attended, to show me their support.”

He, however, reiterated that he would not withdraw his nomination from the election.