Four names have emerged as probables to succeed Rahul Gandhi as Congress president. Who are these leaders?

Mukul Wasnik

The frontrunner in the Congress president race, Wasnik is from Nagpur, is a prominent Dalit face of the party and a Gandhi loyalist.

He has served as the president of both, the Congress's student wing National Students Union of India (NSUI) and the Youth Congress. The first time Wasnik won a seat for the Congress in 1984, he was the youngest MP at the age of 25, from Buldhana, Maharashtra.

Buldhana was earlier held by his father Balkrishna Wasnik, who was also in the Congress.

In a major reshuffle in 2002, then Congress president Sonia Gandhi elevated him to the post of general secretary. Wasnik’s name had also come up during the 2004 Maharashtra Assembly elections as one of the chief ministerial probables. He was elected from Maharashtra’s Ramtek in the 2009 elections and subsequently appointed the Union minister of social justice and empowerment.

Mallikarjun Kharge

A Congress veteran and another prominent Dalit leader, Kharge was the Leader of the party in the previous Lok Sabha.

He was the Karnataka Pradesh Congress chief from 2003 to 2008. In UPA II, Kharge served as a minister twice.

Kharge hails from Karnataka's Gulbarga, from where he was elected to Parliament twice. The 77-year-old had started his political career as a labour union leader and was elected to the Karnataka Assembly a record nine consecutive times. In 2014, even during the Modi wave, Kharge had managed to win Gulbarga.

Kharge has not been keen to become the chief minister of Karnataka, despite being the head of the Karnataka PCC for five years, letting another Congress strongman D.K. Shivakumar handle the situation in the state. Before the last general elections, speculations were rife about Kharge being considered as the prime ministerial face of the Congress. Both Wasnik and Kharge lost their Lok Sabha seats this time.

Sachin Pilot is the president of the Congress's Rajasthan unit. The Telegraph file photo

Sachin Pilot

Milind Deora, the former MP and former president of the Mumbai Congress tweeted in support of two young leaders for the Congress president’s role, one was Jyotiraditya Scindia, the other was Sachin Pilot.

At 41, Pilot is the youngest of the four being speculated to take over the top job in the Congress. He is currently the deputy chief minister of Rajasthan and also the state's Congress president.

After the Congress won the Rajasthan Assembly election last December, the leadership faced a dilemma as the Ashok Gehlot and Pilot camps fought bitterly for the chief minister’s chair.

Rahul Gandhi stepped in to broker truce and Gehlot was made the chief minister. Demands to replace Gehlot with Pilot emerged when the Congress lost Rajasthan to the BJP in the Lok Sabha.

Pilot is also a son of a Congress leader, Rajesh Pilot, who was a friend of Rajiv Gandhi's and was a Union minister under him. Sachin represents the Tonk Assembly constituency, having left the traditional family seat of Dausa.

Jyotiraditya Scindia

Scindia was recently in the news for his tweet supporting the Modi government’s move on Article 370 that scrapped the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.

In a surprise move, he had tweeted his support minutes before the Lok Sabha voting on the bifurcation of the state.

The 48-year-old is from the Scindia family that once ruled Gwalior. His father, Madhavrao Scindia was a nine-term member of the Lok Sabha, never lost an election and had several times been Union minister under Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao.

Elevating a dynast to the top post in the Congress, however, could lead to further criticism for the party. Scindia junior was elected from Guna constituency when it fell vacant because of Madhavrao's death.

Mallikarjun Kharge Telegraph file photo

Jyotiraditya Scindia. Prem Singh