Mallikarjun Kharge to be leader of Opposition in RS

Congress has nominated Mallikarjun Kharge as the new Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Rajya Sabha, party chief Sonia Gandhi informed Upper House chairman Venkaiah Naidu on Friday, three days before the incumbent Ghulam Nabi Azad’s term comes to an end. Kharge, a Dalit leader from Karnataka, was the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha from 2014 to 2019. The grand old party could not get the leader of opposition’s post in the previous and the current Lok Sabha as its numbers were less than the mandated 10% of the total number of seats in the Lower House. Kharge will be the 17th Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha since December 1969. Azad has been the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha for the longest period of 6 years 9 months followed by Sikander Bakht (5 years 10 months), Manmohan Singh (5 years 9 months), Arun Jaitley (5 years 2 months) and Jaswant Singh (5 years).

NEW DELHI: The Congress has nominated Mallikarjun Kharge as the new Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Rajya Sabha, party chief Sonia Gandhi informed Upper House chairman Venkaiah Naidu on Friday — three days before the incumbent Ghulam Nabi Azad’s term comes to an end.

Ever since Kharge was brought in to the Upper House last year, despite his defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, party insiders speculated that he is tipped to succeed Azad. Azad was elected to the Upper House from Jammu and Kashmir, which does not have an assembly currently after it was made a Union Territory with the nullification of Article 370 of the Constitution. Kharge, a Dalit leader, was the floor leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha between 2014 and 2019. He was also the union minister for railway and labour before he was appointed as the party general secretary in charge of Maharashtra.

In the party circles, Kharge is considered very close to Congress’s former president Rahul Gandhi. His nomination also signals that the party will be less accommodating while negotiating with the government for floor management and will work more in tandem with Gandhi’s line of action against the government. Recently, Gandhi was disappointed to see the party’s Rajya Sabha leaders participating in the debate on President’s speech while their Lok Sabha counterparts continued protests to demand a separate discussion on farm laws.