Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who had contested the polls for party presidency last year, met AICC chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday and exchanged thoughts on various issues. The meeting comes days ahead of the party's plenary session to be held in Chhattisgarh's Raipur from February 24 to 26. "Thank you for your graciousness, Congress President @kharge Ji. I enjoyed exchanging thoughts with you on a number of topics today," Tharoor said in a tweet and posted a picture of his meeting with Kharge.

The Congress Working Committee election will also be held along with the plenary session, Congress general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal had said last month.

The Congress president's election will be ratified at the plenary session by all the 9,900-odd Pradesh Congress Committee delegates. Tharoor had been in the news recently for his outreach and meetings in Kerala which had irked a section of the state unit. He had contested the AICC chief polls last October, but lost to Kharge, who was seen by many as the top leadership's candidate. However, Tharoor had managed to get over 1,000 votes and led a spirited campaign.

Earlier this week, Venugopal had claimed the three-day 85th plenary session of the party to be held in Raipur would be a "game changer" for Indian politics.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.