An arduous journey awaits Mallikarjun Kharge who took over the mantle of the Congress from the longest-serving party president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday as the party strives to regain its hold among the masses and revive its electoral fortunes.Kharge’s tenure at the helm begins at a time when the party is electorally at its worst, having lost nearly ten elections since 2020 after a severe drubbing in two consecutive Lok Sabha polls, and is facing tough competition from regional outfits even in the Opposition space.Facing multiple challenges, the veteran leader has to make the Congress battle-ready by resuscitating the largely-comatose party organisation.The 80-year-old veteran’s elevation in the 137-year-old party is also intended to shed its image that it is a family-run outfit, at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched an all-out attack on the so called ”dynastic parties”, alleging that ”family-owned” parties are the biggest threat to democracy.Kharge also faces the challenge of restoring the Congress party’s primacy in the Opposition space, implementing radical reforms the party pledged at the mid-May Chintan Shivir in Udaipur and maintaining his independence in the face of insinuations that he is an ”establishment” candidate and would seek the approval of Gandhis in all decisions.He is the first non-Gandhi to take over the party after 24 years and the second Dalit leader to hold the post in 50 years after Jagjivan Ram led the Congress in 1969.For Kharge, who has served as the leader of the opposition in the Karnataka assembly, leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha and later the leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, the current assignment comes when the party is in power on its own only in two states – Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan – and is struggling to reclaim its turf in others.
The immediate task for Kharge would be to deliver the Congress a fighting chance in Himachal Pradesh which goes to elections in days from now on November 12.Soon after, the new Congress chief would need to put the party’s house in order in election-bound Gujarat where an aggressive incumbent BJP will go all out to hold power and new entrant AAP appears set to present a serious challenge, eroding the advantage the Congress could have traditionally enjoyed in a direct fight with the saffron party.