More indications of institutional support to the candidature of Mallikarjun Kharge as Congress president emerged as three party spokespersons on Sunday resigned to campaign for him, apart from the apathetic response to Shashi Tharoor on his first campaign tour.

The spokespersons who resigned — Deepender Singh Hooda, Naseer Hussain and Gourav Vallabh — were present with Kharge on Sunday when he interacted with the media for the first time after becoming the presidential candidate. Kharge thanked the trio for their support.

Asked if they took permission from general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh, Vallabh told The Telegraph: “This was our personal decision and we conveyed the same to Jairam Ramesh. There is internal democracy in the Congress, but we wanted to act according to the advisory of the central election authority and the wishes of party president Sonia Gandhi who want a free and fair poll. We thought we cannot campaign for one candidate while holding the post of spokespersons of the party.”

No office-bearer has so far resigned to campaign for Tharoor. What should be worrying for him is the poor response he got on his first campaign tour when he landed in Nagpur, Maharashtra. Tharoor was received by Ashish Deshmukh, seen as a disgruntled leader, while no other senior leader from Nagpur chose to meet him despite requests.

Sources said senior leaders like Vilas Muttemwar, Nitin Raut and Sunil Kedar refused to meet Tharoor. Barely two-three of around 35 voters from Nagpur met him, the sources added. Asked for the reason for keeping away from Tharoor because the delegates could have heard the views of both candidates, a leader told this newspaper: “The reason is not personal. But he is being seen as a challenger while Kharge has been accepted as the official candidate.”

The loud assertions about no “official” candidate and the claims of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi remaining neutral belie the visual confirmation of Kharge’s status as the high command’s choice that was sent out across the country from the room where nomination papers were filed. All senior leaders were not only present in the room, they also proposed his name.

As if that was not enough, one of the key members of the high command, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, said on Sunday that Tharoor was a good man with good ideas but he was from the elite class. Describing someone as elite is a debilitating blow in politics. And it is not because of Tharoor’s swagger and background that he is called elite, his description of the poor as “cattle class” has stuck to his persona.

Tharoor has now been elected Lok Sabha member thrice from Thiruvananthapuram; elitism doesn’t help a leader win people’s sustained support in the rough and tumble of realpolitik. But Tharoor has been unable to break mental barriers and is considered elite by the majority of Congress workers who recall how he failed to understand Narendra Modi’s diversionary tactics over Swachh Bharat and supported it by going against the party line.

The three spokespersons who resigned on Sunday to campaign for Kharge appear cut out to support someone like Tharoor. While Hooda, an engineer, did his MBA from Indiana University in the US, Vallabh is a professor at one of the most elite institutions, XLRI Jamshedpur. Hussain is a PhD in international studies from JNU.

But all of them believe that Kharge, a Dalit who rose from a humble background and won Assembly polls for nine consecutive terms has better credentials to lead the party.

Kharge has exceptional experience; he held several important portfolios in the Karnataka government, was state Congress president and leader of the Opposition in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, apart from being railway and labour minister at the Centre.

Kharge said on Sunday that he agreed to contest only because a large number of Congress leaders, both old and young, had requested him to. He said he was not fighting against anybody but to strengthen the Congress ideology and organisation. He said he tried to convince Tharoor that a consensus was better but the latter insisted on contesting.

On Tharoor’s campaign theme that he stood for change and Kharge meant status quo, the veteran leader said: “Change will be done through collective will in a democratic way, not by one individual.”

Kharge refused to lock horns with Tharoor in a one-on-one debate, arguing that “both of us should debate prices, unemployment and threat to constitutional values instead of fighting with each other”.