Kharge to take Congress pres's office on October 26

New Delhi: Mallikarjun Kharge will take the office of the Congress president on October 26 in a function at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters, PTI reports.

He will be presented with the certificate of his election to the post in the function, and he will assume his new historical role.

The Congress on Wednesday elected 'loyalist' Mallikarjun Kharge as its new president, the first non-Gandhi to head the 137-year-old party in 24 years and succeed long-time chief Sonia Gandhi.

The 80-year-old Kharge trounced his 66-year-old rival, Shashi Tharoor, bagging over 84 per cent of the votes in the presidential election.

Kharge had beaten Shashi Tharoor with more than 84 per cent of the total poll. The former polled 7,897 Pradesh Congress Committee delegate votes out of 9,385, while the latter 1072.

AICC general secretary K C Venugopal said on Twitter, "Function for the presentation of the certificate of election to the newly elected Congress President Shri Mallikarjun Kharge will be held on Wednesday, October 26 2022, at 10.30 am at AICC Headquarters, 24 Akbar Road, New Delhi."

Kharge, who was the Leader of the Opposition, resigned from the post to contest in the party president's election. He was earlier the Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha. He has been a Union minister for almost a decade.

He was a nine-time legislator in Karnataka, though he never became the chief minister of the state.

He was from a Dalit family and reached the top levels of Congress from the grassroots.