Newly-elected Mallikarjun Kharge will assume the charge of Congress president on Wednesday at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in Delhi. He was elected to the post last week.
The oath-taking ceremony is likely to see the presence of all Congress Working Committee members, MPs, Pradesh Congress Committee presidents, CLP leaders, former chief ministers, state presidents, and other AICC office bearers. General Secretary K C Venugopal has reportedly sent invitations to all the above, reported ANI.
The ceremony will also witness Kharge being given the certificate of victory by central election authority chief Madhusudan Mistry. After that, the meeting will also pass a resolution to thank outgoing president Sonia Gandhi for her contribution as party chief.
Both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, who is on a break from his Bharat Jodo Yatra, will attend the ceremony.
Kharge has also met former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday and will reportedly visit Rajghat, Shakti Sthal (the samadhi of former PM Indira Gandhi) and Vir Bhoomi (the samadhi of former PM Rajiv Gandhi) before arriving at the AICC office.
Kharge, the first non-Gandhi to hold the post in over two decades, beat his opponent Shashi Tharoor, a MP from Thiruvananthapuram, by a margin of over 6,000 votes. While Kharge got 7,897 votes in the presidential contest, Tharoor received 1,072 votes.
Kharge will also be the second Dalit president of Congress in five decades after Jagjivan Ram became Congress chief in 1970.
The 80-year-old will also have huge tasks ahead of him as the party is at a historic low, electorally. His primary challenge now will be to bring the party to power in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, which go to polls in the next few weeks. While the polls in Himachal Pradesh are scheduled for November 12, the dates for Gujarat polls are yet to be announced.
Kharge will also face the challenging task of leading the Congress in nine assembly elections, including in his home state of Karnataka where he was an MLA for nine terms, in 2023.