Results are due on Wednesday in battered party\u2019s bid to revamp itself after losing last two general elections
\nNew Delhi
\nMembers of India\u2019s opposition Congress party voted on Monday to elect its first head in nearly 25 years from outside the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty of leaders, with a veteran loyal to the family expected to win.
\nResults are due on Wednesday in the battered party\u2019s bid to revamp itself after losing the last two general elections to Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Hindu nationalist party, despite the leadership of Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia.
\nWith the next general election due by 2024, Modi retains a big edge over the party, which dominated politics for decades after leading India to independence from Britain in 1947, but has recently struggled to recoup its fortunes.
\nParty veteran Mallikarjun Kharge, 80, has the support of many members, and his 66-year-old rival and former UN diplomat, Shashi Tharoor, has already complained about big leaders openly supporting Kharge.
\n\u201cWe are strongly supporting Kharge and expect he will get 80% to 90% of the votes of party delegates,\u201d Ajay Kumar Lallu, a Congress delegate from the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, told Reuters.
\n\u201cKharge represents the ideology of the party, has the support of the senior leadership, and is likely to work by taking along party workers,\u201d Lallu added.
\nHe was speaking as Congress\u2019s Bharat Jodo Yatra, or march to unite India, arrived in the district of Ballari in the southern state of Karnataka.
\nKharge has said he was seeking the \u201csupport of the delegates to strengthen Congress for a better India\u201d.
\nUttar Pradesh accounts for about 1,200 of the nearly 9,000 Congress delegates, most of them senior party members, who will vote for its president, a position held by Sonia Gandhi on an interim basis since her son Rahul resigned in July 2019.
\nOn Twitter, Tharoor said he had spoken with Kharge to \u201creaffirm my respect for him and our shared devotion to the success\u201d of the party.
\n\u201cSome people play safe in order not to lose,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if you just play safe, you will definitely lose.\u201d
\nCongress has mostly been led by a member of the Gandhi family, choosing presidents unanimously for terms of five years, except in the years 1937, 1950, 1997 and 2000, when elections were held since there was more than one candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Results are due on Wednesday in battered party\u2019s bid to revamp itself after losing last two general elections New Delhi Members of India\u2019s opposition Congress party voted on Monday to elect its first head in nearly 25 years from outside the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty of leaders, with a veteran loyal to the family expected to win. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-289917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n