‘I’m sorry to say…’: Mistry attacks Team Tharoor over ‘congress prez poll irregularities’!

Madhusudan Mistry, the head of the Congress national election authority, took aim at senior party figure Shashi Tharoor on Thursday. Tharoor had run unsuccessfully against Mallikarjun Kharge for the party’s top position. After the results of the Congress presidential election were published, Tharoor and his team claimed there had been serious anomalies. In his response, Mistry criticised Tharoor for claiming that the election authority was ‘conspiring against him’ while accommodating his demands.

When Tharoor’s top election agent questioned Mistry about allegations of anomalies in the election process, Mistry said, ‘We fulfilled your request and despite that you went to the media stating the Central Election Authority was plotting against you’.  Further criticising the Thiruvananthapuram MP, Mistry said that he presented two different personas to the media and the election commission. ‘I regret to inform you that you presented me with one face that indicated that you were pleased with all of our responses, while a different face appeared in the media and levelled all of these accusations against us’.

Four concerns about the voting process were made in a letter from Tharoor’s polling agent to Madhusudan Mistry: the use of non-official seals on vote boxes, the presence of non-official people in polling places, fraud committed during the voting, and the lack of polling sheets. On November 17, elections were held for the Congress’s presidency. ‘We didn’t run for office to continue doing things the same way. For the validity of this election, we are prepared to battle. Due to the fact that both competitors are related, winning or losing has little meaning’, said in the letter.

However, Salman Soz continued, ‘it matters enormously to our campaign, our volunteers, and our supporters that we guarantee that the Indian National Congress emerges from this election stronger’. In the pivotal polls, Tharoor only garnered 1,072 votes, while Kharge, a colleague and the incoming president of the Congress, received 7,897 votes and won with a landslide. 416 ballots were ruled invalid. Currently, Kharge is prepared to succeed Sonia Gandhi as the leader of the venerable party.