- Sunday, March 09, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Sonia Gandhi, the interim president of the Indian National Congress and also its longest-serving one, on Monday (17) cast her vote to elect the new chief of the grand-old party at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) office in New Delhi.
Her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is the Congress’s general secretary, accompanied the veteran leader.
After casting her vote, Sonia, who will turn 76 in December, said that she had been waiting for a long time to see this day. A video of her words, which was posted by news agency Asian News International, went viral. Sonia, who is not known for giving much media bytes, said this when some journalists asked whether she was happy with the electoral proceedings.
#WATCH | "I have been waiting for a long time for this thing," says Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi on the party's presidential election pic.twitter.com/9giL5DeOEX
— ANI (@ANI) October 17, 2022
“I have been waiting for a long time for this day,” Gandhi, a parliamentarian from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, said with a smile.
Sonia became the president of the century-old party in 1998 and continued till 2017 when her son Rahul Gandhi took over. But the latter stepped down inside two years after the party fared miserably in the 2019 general elections which saw Sonia returning to the helm as an interim president.
Voting was being held in the party to pick its new president who will be from outside the Gandhi family which has traditionally dominated its affairs. The two contestants are Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor, both parliamentarians and from southern India.
Several senior party leaders, including Jairam Ramesh, Ambika Soni, Ajay Maken, Kamal Nath, P Chidambaram, and others also cast their ballots. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh was also seen casting his vote.
Rahul, who reportedly refused to become the president for the second time, also cast his vote at a campsite of the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ (Unite India March) which is currently underway to mobilise mass support for the party.
The 52-year-old parliamentarian from Wayanad in the southern state of Kerala, who has undertaken the mega long march, voted at a specialised booth at the campsite in Ballari in the state of Karnataka.
The 3,500-kilometre long march from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu to Kashmir observed a “rest day” on Monday since its beginning on September 7.
Over 9,000 Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates formed an electoral college to pick the new party chief in a secret ballot.
The results of the election, which was postponed, will be announced on Wednesday (19).
The last time a non-Gandhi member of the party served as its president was between 1996 and 1998 when Sitaram Kesri led it.
