Former Union Ministers Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor are in the fray and it will be for the first time in 24 years that the party will get a party chief who does not belong to the Nehru-Gandhi family.
The new president will take place of Sonia Gandhi who had been serving as interim president after Rahul Gandhi stepped down from the post following the party's debacle in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The result is likely to be declared between 3 pm to 4 pm. The ballot boxes from the state headquarters have reached the counting place in the Congress office.
Mallikarjun Kharge is seen as the favourite to win the contest. Five agents from each side will oversee the counting while two agents from both sides will be kept in reserve, sources said.
The Chairman of the Central Election Authority will announce the result after counting.
Of the total 9,915 Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates that formed the electoral college to pick the party chief in a secret ballot, over 9,500 cast their ballot at PCC offices and the AICC headquarters, Mistry said at a press conference after the polling ended on Monday.
Congress central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry has expressed satisfaction with the party's presidential polls process, saying it was "free, fair and transparent". He has also said it was a secret ballot and no one would get to know who voted for whom.
Sources said seven-eight tables will be set up for counting of votes and each table will have two persons.
Congress sources said the elected president will take charge after Diwali in the presence of senior leaders in a programme at the Congress headquarters.
It has not been decided whether the certificate will be given to the winner on Wednesday or later.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who was earlier the frontrunner for the post, will be in Delhi tomorrow. Rahul Gandhi will continue on the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Previous Non-Gandhi Congress President
It is the sixth time in Congress' nearly 137-year-old history that an electoral contest will decide who would take up the mantle of the party's president as successor to Sonia Gandhi.
It was way back in 1939, when an electoral contest decided who would be the Congress president, and Mahatma Gandhi's candidate P Sitaramayya had lost to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
Then in 1950 came the Congress' first post-Independence election for the post of party president when Purshottam Das Tandon and Acharya Kripalani faced off. Surprisingly, Tandon, seen as a Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel loyalist, won the contest, trumping the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's choice.
In 1977, following the resignation of Dev Kant Barooah as party president in the wake of the defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, K Brahmananda Reddy defeated Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Karan Singh in the party's polls for AICC chief.
The next election that needed a contest came 20 years later in 1997 when Sitaram Kesri squared off in a triangular contest with Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot. Except for Maharashtra and parts of Uttar Pradesh, all state Congress units had backed Kesri. He posted a landslide victory, getting 6,224 delegates' votes against Pawar's 882 and Pilot's 354.
The fifth contest came in 2000 and this was the only time a Gandhi family member was challenged in the elections with Jitendra Prasada taking on Sonia Gandhi. Prasada suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Gandhi, who garnered over 7,400 votes. Prasada had reportedly polled a paltry 94 votes.
The current polls are historic as the new president would replace Sonia Gandhi, the longest-serving party president who has been at the helm since 1998, barring the two years between 2017 and 2019 when Rahul Gandhi had taken over.
The Nehru-Gandhi family has been at the helm of the party for about 40 years since Independence. The five family members to take on the mantle of the Congress president included Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
(With inputs from ANI)
