Kesri wins Congress election in style
In only the fourth election in the party's long history, Sitaram Kesri, the backroom political operator from Bihar, was elected Congress president on Thursday night.
The 78-year-old politician -- who was elected interim president of the party after P V Narasimha Rao stepped down as Congress leader last September after being chargesheeted in the Lakhubhai Pathak case -- won in emphatic style, capturing 82.36 per cent of the vote.
He secured 6,224 of the 7,557 votes polled in the election held on June 9. His rivals Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot trailed far behind. Pawar suffered a particularly humiliating defeat, winning just 882 votes while Pilot secured a mere 354 votes. Ninetyseven votes were declared invalid.
Announcing the results at a crowded press conference at the Congress headquarters, Oscar Fernandes, the chief returning officer for the election, said Kesri won with a clear majority in the first round of counting of first preference votes. Hence, the second preference votes were not taken up for counting.
The counting process started at 1100 hours with the mixing of votes
from different parts of the country. The actual counting began six hours
later. Party sources said the delay in counting of votes was due to
objections raised by rival poll agents about some discrepancies in the
number of ballot papers.
A jubilant Kesri, who was ushered into the press conference,
thanked his party colleagues for electing him with an overwhelming
majority.
Recalling the withdrawal of Congress support to the H D Deve
Gowda government, Kesri said he took that decision on the demand
of party workers and their verdict proved that the decision was
correct.
Sharad Pawar -- who is widely exepected to be replaced as the Congress party's leader in the Lok Sabha -- conceded defeat and congratulated Kesri on the telephone.
''We must ensure total unity among the ranks without ignoring any section of
the party,'' the vanquished Maratha leader -- who has always steered away from any contest that he could not win -- said.
''Those workers who feel left out of the election process for
whatever reasons," he said, "should ask loyal Congressmen to sink their
differences and continue to serve the party as loyally as before. I might have lost the election, but my commitment to rebuild the party is as firm as ever.''
Pilot also congratulated Kesri on his election. As did Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral in a telephone call from Shimla. Gujral knows that the Congress leader -- who now has the cachet of electoral legitimacy conferred on him -- is a customer who cannot be trifled with.
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