Mallikarjun Kharge: Congress's New Old Leader Has A Legacy To Protect

Mallikarjun Kharge is in politics for over 50 years; but this longevity is also seen as outdatedness by those who want Congress to look at future

Mallikarjun Kharge may have been the Establishment candidate in the Congress chiefship contest, but he is hard to beat anyway — having won almost every election he has fought. 

‘Solillada saradara', the undefeated leader, is what his supporters call him in Kannada.

The party poll victory makes him the first non-Gandhi Congress chief in 24 years. He is also the first Dalit to lead the Congress in 50 years, only the second after Jagjivan Ram. He's been a politician for more than five decades, which means this isn't quite the only feat he's achieved.

Now in the Rajya Sabha, often seen as the typical loyalist's route to being near the top rung, he was elected to the assembly in Karnataka nine times before entering the Lok Sabha in 2009. He kept that Lok Sabha seat even when the Modi wave blew much of the Congress away in 2014.