After his official entry into the Congress president race, Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge today resigned as the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha. The resignation comes a day after he filed his nomination papers for the AICC president’s election.
80-year-old Kharge’s resignation is in line with the party’s ‘One person, One post’ principle that was announced at the Udaipur ‘Chintan Shivir’ in May.
Kharge sent his resignation to Congress president Sonia Gandhi last night. Senior leaders P Chidambaram and Digvijaya Singh are the likely front-runners for the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha post.
With the resignation, the stage is set for a contest between Kharge and Shashi Tharoor for the Congress president’s post. Kharge, a Dalit leader from Karnataka has emerged as the clear favourite. There was another entry into the race – K N Tripathi, a former Jharkhand minister, who is considered a lightweight for the contest.
Kharge, Tharoor and Tripathi all filed their nominations on the last day of the process which saw the AICC headquarters come back to life after a long time, with workers swarming the complex.
Kharge, flanked by top Congress leaders, has filed 14 sets of nomination papers with the proposers including Ashok Gehlot, Digvijaya Singh, A K Antony, Ambika Soni, Mukul Wasnik and members from the G-23 ginger group comprising Anand Sharma, Bhupinder Hooda, Prithviraj Chavan and Manish Tewari.
The final frontrunners list comes after much drama over Ashok Gehot running for the post. His MLAs in Rajasthan staged a rebellion forcing him to ditch his Delhi plans.
(With inputs from PTI)
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