Analysis | Tharoor’s 1,072 score a political point over Kharge’s 7,897

Miracle did not happen. Shashi Tharoor had to settle for 1,072 votes while Mallikarjun Kharge won the Congress presidential poll with 7,897 votes.

The winning margin of Kharge could be huge, but it’s still a win-win for both the contenders.

While Kharge, the candidate of continuity as his rival called him, emerged the winner rather comfortably, the over 10 per cent votes polled by Tharoor, who dared to take on the complacent Congress status quo, is a clear signal that his slogan of change did not go unheard fully.

At no point during the poll campaign, did the Tharoor camp expect to win over the establishment.

If someone or Tharoor himself did so, it was nothing but political naivety.

For anyone, who has a vague idea of how the Congress system functions around the Nehru-Gandhi family, Kharge’s win was easy guesswork.

A Tharoor win would have been simply magic like a Congress win over the Modi-Shah’s BJP in the present circumstances.

So the only factor of curiosity with the Congress internal election was how many votes Tharoor would poll, and what that number would signify.

Now, we have the answer. From today in political arithmetic, the number 1,072 signifies a clamour for change in the Congress system.

The official faction, which backed Kharge even as the Gandhi family kept saying that it was neutral, used to claim that Tharoor could score some 500 votes maximum, while the Tharoor camp was always confident that he would poll over 1,000 votes.

What is significant is that Tharoor has grabbed the support of a sizeable share of party office-bearers appointed by the official faction.

As a source close to the Thiruvananthapuram MP said: “Tharoor has emerged the second most influential leader in the party outside the Gandhi family.”

The tendency to compare the results with that of the previous Congress president’s election is quite natural. In the 1999 poll, party veteran Jitendra Prasada had to settle for a pitiful 94 votes of the 7,542 valid votes, against Sonia Gandhi’s 7,448.

Tharoor, being a keen student of history, was careful not to end up as another Jitendra Prasada.

He decided to enter the poll fray only after it became clear that nobody from the Gandhi family (Sonia, Rahul or Priyanka) would be contesting.

Not only that, he took extra care to send out a signal to the party workers that he was not a rebel candidate. He filed his nomination only after meeting Sonia and Rahul. Then on the campaign side, he acted smart with a manifesto, messaging and meetings.

The establishment was not kind enough to him and their partiality was evident. The Pradesh Congress Committees, except Kamal Nath’s Madhya Pradesh, did not welcome Tharoor.

The official faction brazenly ensured that there was no level-playing field. Yet, Tharoor could make a dent in the establishment and its status quo with his personal influence and impeccable messaging.

Tharoor kept saying that he was contesting only to strengthen the organisation, not to divide it. The message was taken in well by a huge number of party workers, even though they did not have voting right in the internal polls.

What next?
The impressive performance in the presidential poll has made Tharoor a natural choice to be nominated to the Congress Working Committee, the highest decision-making body.

Tharoor could also be bargaining for a key post, something like working president, though the official faction is unlikely to entertain such hefty demands.

If the establishment’s plan is to keep him outside the organisational structure again, that would be yet another historical blunder by the grand old party.