NEW DELHI; Congress is expected to pick a non-Gandhi president for the first time in 24 years on Wednesday. To choose between senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor, more over 9,500 votes were cast on Monday. The votes will be tallied today to conclude the election campaign, which is the sixth in the nation's 137-year existence.

At the AICC headquarters in New Delhi, the counting of the ballots cast on Monday will start at 10 am on Wednesday.

The 68 polling places set up across the nation have all of their sealed ballot boxes maintained in a "strong room" at the party headquarters.

Kharge is widely seen as the clear favourite because of his alleged closeness to the Gandhis and the support of many senior figures, while Tharoor has positioned himself as the change-seeking candidate.

The sealed ballot boxes will be unveiled before the candidates' agents and the ballot papers will be mixed repeatedly.

Madhusudan Mistry, the chairman of the central electoral authority for the Congress party, praised the party's "open, fair, and transparent" presidential election process. He  has also stated that the vote was anonymous and that no one would find out who had supported whom.

Over 9,500 of the total 9,915 Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates who made up the electoral college and cast votes at PCC offices and the AICC headquarters, Mistry said at a press conference after the polling concluded on Monday.

The Congress has asserted that it is the only party with a central election authority for organisational polls and that no other party can compare its internal democracy to its own.

It is the sixth time in the nearly 137-year history of the Congress that electoral contest is determining who would succeed Sonia Gandhi as the party's president.

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