Who Is Radhabai Kharge? Wife Of Newly Appointed Congress Chief Mallikarjun Kharge

Veteran politician Mallikarjun Kharge has been appointed as the new Congress party president. He won the Congress presidential elections with 7,897 votes, while his opponent Shashi Tharoor got about 1000 votes; 416 votes were rejected.

This is the first time in more than 20 years that the party will have a non-Gandhi at the helm - the last such chief Sitaram Kesri was unceremoniously removed in 1998 just after two years into his five-year term. He was replaced by Sonia Gandhi - widow of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi - who then served as the party president for 19 years. Her son Rahul Gandhi was elected unopposed in 2017, but he stepped down two years later owning responsibility for the party's rout in the 2019 general elections. Since then, Sonia Gandhi has been heading the party as the interim chief.

Popularly known as Solillada Saradara (a leader without defeat) in his home state of Karnataka, Mallikarjun is a leader with more than five decades of years of experience in politics.

Kharge, 80, was elected MLA nine times in a row and has seen a steady rise in his career graph from humble beginnings as a union leader in his home district of Gulbarga, now Kalaburagi.

Who is Radhabai Kharge?

Kharge married Radhabai on 13 May 1968 and has three sons – Priyank, Rahul and Milind, and two daughters, Priyadarshini and Jayashree. Radhaibai is a homemaker. Except for his son Priyank, who is a Congress MLA and a former Karnataka minister, all his other children maintain a low profile, with his other two sons being businessmen. Associates say his children's names were inspired by the Nehru-Gandhi family members.

Even before the results of the Congress presidential polls were out, party leader Rahul Gandhi referred to Mallikarjun Kharge as the new Congress president about half an hour before the result of the party election declared Kharge as the winner.

During a press conference in Andhra Pradesh, when a reporter asked about his new role in the party, Gandhi replied, “I can’t comment on Congress President’s role, that’s for Khargeji (party’s Presidential candidate) to comment on. The President will decide what my role is…”

He followed up, "The final authority in the Congress party is the Congress president. And we will have a new Congress president. And that gentleman will decide exactly how the party moves forward."

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