New Delhi - Mallikarjun Kharge won the Congress Presidential elections today, to become the party's first non-Gandhi president in over two decades.

Kharge garnered 7,897 votes out of the total 9,385 votes (with 416 invalid votes). Shashi Tharoor, his opponent, trailed behind with 1,072 votes. 

Kharg, the Gandhi family’s ‘unofficial official candidate’ with a large number of senior leaders backing him, will replace interim Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. Earlier in the day, in what appeared to be a slip of tongue, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi responded to a question referring to Mallikarjun Kharge as the new Congress president.

This is the sixth time in its nearly 137-year-old history that an electoral contest decided who would take up the position of the Congress party’s president. The contest between the two veteran leaders drew a massive turnout of voters Monday with close to 96 per cent of Pradesh Congress Committee delegates casting their ballot.

Of the 9,915 PCC delegates, 9,497 cast their votes across state capitals, 87 at the AICC headquarters and 50 at the Yatra campsite, said Madhusudan Mistry, who heads the party’s Central Election Authority (CEA).

Shashi Tharoor's team has written to the party's chief election authority, flagging "extremely serious irregularities" in the conduct of the election in Uttar Pradesh and demanded that all votes from the state be deemed invalid, sources said.

Tharoor's campaign team has also raised "serious issues" in the conduct of the election in Punjab and Telangana.

In his letter to Central Election Authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry, Tharoor's chief election agent Salman Soz has said the facts are "damning" and the election process in Uttar Pradesh is "devoid of credibility and integrity", they said.

A member of the Dalit (formerly untouchable) community from the southern state of Karnataka, Kharge has had a long stint in public life. An astute administrator, he has served as minister in several state governments.

In his new role, the 80-year-old veteran will be expected to hit the ground running - the next general elections are due in just a little over 18 months and experts say the Congress party needs reforms to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

And it will be his job to provide leadership to the party as it faces its worst crisis "structurally, organisationally, and even in terms of ideological leadership".
-PTI/TOI/BBC