Inside Track: Pricey Presidential Perks

If Kharge demits the president’s post, the obvious replacement is K C Venugopal, who is already party general secretary in charge of the organisation and has Gandhi’s ear. 5 min readJun 14, 2026 07:30 AM IST First published on: Jun 14, 2026 at 07:30 AM IST After the Congress’s fraught delay in nominating V D Satheesan as Kerala Chief Minister, the focus has shifted to 83-year old Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge. Some complain that Kharge is turning into a bit of a liability because of his excess baggage. Kharge violates the principle of one man, one post — apart from being party president, he is also Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha and enjoys the perks that come with the office. Kharge’s son Priyank has just been appointed Home Minister in the new D K Shiv Kumar government in Karnataka. For the forthcoming Rajya Sabha elections, Kharge has selected his aide Pranav Jha as the Congress candidate from Jharkhand, when there were several more deserving candidates. Earlier, Kharge’s protégé, Neeraj Dangi, got a Rajya Sabha ticket from Rajasthan. Rahul Gandhi is particularly upset with Kharge’s lack of judgment in the Tamil Nadu poll. The party president, along with P Chidambaram, insisted that the Congress not break its long-standing alliance with the DMK, although Rahul Gandhi was keen for an electoral tie-up with the charismatic film star C Joseph Vijay, who eventually ended up as chief minister. The Congress ditched the DMK only after the results. It won a mere five seats with the DMK alliance. If Kharge demits the president’s post, the obvious replacement is K C Venugopal, who is already party general secretary in charge of the organisation and has Gandhi’s ear. Endurance Test Last month’s marathon four-and-a-half hour meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his Cabinet ministers and secretaries concerned at the Seva Teerth was not merely an assessment of the performance of the different ministries; it was also an unspoken test of the endurance and physical fitness of Modi’s ministers. One minister who failed the test by dozing off — though not quite as conspicuously as US President Donald Trump who has often been captured on camera snoozing at meetings in the Oval Office of late — had to be nudged awake by a senior secretary.Mamata’s Search for Safe Seat The day after the West Bengal election results, Mamata Banerjee found her world turned upside down. During the night, all photographs of Banerjee in Kolkata were removed and posters of Suvendu Adhikari pasted in their place. She learnt that many of her trusted legislators were planning to switch to the BJP. Though isolated and vilified, Banerjee retains her fighting spirit and feels that at this juncture, Delhi would be a better option than remaining in Bengal. She is looking for a safe Lok Sabha seat. (A Rajya Sabha ticket is not an option since even if a TMC MP steps down for her, a by-election would automatically favour the BJP.) The initial speculation was that cricketer Yusuf Pathan might vacate his Baharampur Lok Sabha seat to make way for didi but Pathan has turned rebel. Now Banerjee has zeroed in on the Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency where a by-election is due and the voter breakdown favours the TMC. No stranger to struggle, the feisty Banerjee has fought singlehandedly in the past to carve her political legacy. Between 1999 and 2001, she was the lone TMC member in the Lok Sabha. Old-time parliamentary scribes recall that she once angrily threw a paper, which she claimed was a flawed voter list, at the acting Speaker. Ironically, she charged that the voter list was replete with infiltrators from Bangladesh, while in the recent Bengal poll, she took the diametrically opposite stance against the BJP on the same issue. Temple Tours Recorded The string of ministers from both the Centre and states who visited temples last Wednesday to offer prayers for Prime Minister Modi in appreciation of his remarkable feat as the longest serving Indian Prime Mini