Team News Riveting
New Delhi, October 17
Over 90 per cent of the around 9,900 electors cast their votes in the Congress presidential polls held on Monday.
Party’s central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry said on Monday that the overall voter turnout was about 96 per cent and in small states, it was nearly 100 per cent. Senior Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor are in the fray. Voting in the much-discussed elections began at 10 am at the AICC headquarters and at polling booths in PCC offices across the country.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra voted in Delhi while Rahul Gandhi, who is on the Bharat Jodo Yatra, exercised his franchise at a meeting room container converted into a polling booth at the yatra campsite in Ballari in Karnataka.
Kharge, 80, a Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka, cast his ballot at the Karnataka Congress office in Bengaluru. His electoral rival, the party’s 66-year-old Thiruvananthapuram MP Tharoor, who has pitched himself as the candidate of change, voted in the Kerala capital.
Addressing a press conference, Mistry said by and large the voter turnout in all places was over 90 per cent. “The most satisfactory thing for us was that in all states where polling booths were set up, no adverse incident was reported. This is a big achievement…polls were held in an open process in a peaceful manner,” Mistry said.
The grand old party is all set to have a non-Gandhi president in over 24 years. The results of the election will be out on October 19.
Kharge is tipped to win the election because of his proximity to the Gandhis. Sivaganga Congress MP Karti P Chidambaram, who backed Shashi Tharoor in the AICC presidential election, on Monday claimed that the poll result will be a pleasant surprise.
