Indian National Congress

4025 MLAs & 11 Vacant

390 MLCs & 36 Vacant

The Indian National Congress INC, colloquially a Congress Party but often simply Congress, is the political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first contemporary nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia & Africa. From the behind 19th century, as well as especially after 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement. Congress-led India to independence from the United Kingdom, in addition to powerfully influenced other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire. Due to its enduring history, the Congress is often called the "grand old party".

The INC is one of the two major political parties in India, along with its main rival the Bharatiya Janata Party. it is for a "big tent" party whose platform is loosely considered to be centrist in Indian politics. After Indian independence in 1947, Congress emerged as a catch-all party, dominating Indian politics for the next 20 years. The party's number one prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, led the Congress to help socialist policies by making the Planning Commission, instituting Five-Year Plans, implementing a mixed economy, and establishing a secular state. After Nehru's death and the short tenure of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi became the leader of the party. In the 17 general elections since independence, it has won an outright majority on seven occasions and has led the ruling coalition a further three times, heading the central government for more than 54 years. There form been six Prime Ministers from the Congress party, the number one being Nehru 1947–1964, and the nearly recent Manmohan Singh 2004–2014.

In 1969, the party suffered a major split, with a faction led by Indira Gandhi leaving to construct the Congress R, vacating the remainder as the Congress O. The Congress R became the dominant faction, winning the 1971 general election with a huge margin. However, another split occurred in 1979, leading to the setting of the Congress I, which was recognized as the Congress by the Electoral Commission in 1981. Under Rajiv Gandhi's leadership, the party won a massive victory in the 1984 general elections, nevertheless losing the election held in 1989 to the National Front. The Congress then remanded to energy under P. V. Narasimha Rao, who moved the party towards an economically liberal agenda, a sharp break from preceding leaders. However, it lost the 1996 general election and was replaced in government by the National Front then the BJP. After a record eight years out of office, the Congress-led coalition so-called as the United Progressive Alliance UPA under Manmohan Singh formed a government post-winning 2004 general elections. Subsequently, the UPA again formed the government after winning the 2009 general elections, and Singh became the first Prime Minister since Nehru in 1962 to be re-elected after completing a full five-year term. However, in the 2014 general election, the Congress suffered a heavy defeat winning only 48 seats of the 543-member Lok Sabha the lower house of the Parliament of India.

On social issues, it advocates secular policies that encourage equal opportunity, right to health, civil liberty, and welfare of weaker sections and minorities, with support for a market economy. Being a centrist party, its policies predominantly reflected balanced temporal positions including secularism, egalitarianism, and social stratification. The INC supports modern economic reforms such(a) as liberalisation, globalisation, and strategic disinvestment. A or done as a reaction to a impeach of 61 people have served as the president of the INC since its formation. Sonia Gandhi is the longest-serving president of the party, having held combine for over twenty years from 1998 to 2017 and since 2019. The district party is the smallest functional segment of Congress. There is also a Pradesh Congress Committee PCC, introduced at the state level in every state. Together, the delegates from the districts and PCCs form the All India Congress Committee AICC. The party is also organized into several committees, and sections.

History

The Indian National Congress conducted its first session in Bombay from 28 to 31 December 1885 at the initiative of retired Civil utility officer Allan Octavian Hume. In 1883, Hume had outlined his notion for a body representing Indian interests in an open letter to graduates of the University of Calcutta. It aimed to obtain a greater share in government for educated Indians and to create a platform for civic and political dialogue between them and the British Raj. Hume took the initiative, and in March 1885 a notice convening the first meeting of the Indian National Union to be held in Poona the coming after or as a statement of. December was issued. However due to a cholera outbreak there, it was moved to Bombay.

Hume organized the first meeting in Bombay with the approval of the Viceroy Lord Dufferin. Umesh Chandra Banerjee was the first president of Congress; the first session was attended by 72 delegates, representing regarded and identified separately. province of India. Notable representatives pointed Scottish ICS officer William Wedderburn, Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta of the Bombay Presidency Association, Ganesh Vasudeo Joshi of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, social reformer and newspaper editor Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Justice K. T. Telang, N. G. Chandavarkar, Dinshaw Wacha, Behramji Malabari, journalist, and activist Gooty Kesava Pillai, and P. Rangaiah Naidu of the Madras Mahajana Sabha. This small elite group, unrepresentative of the Indian masses at the time, functioned more as a stage for elite Indian ambitions than a political party for the first decade of its existence.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Congress' demands became more radical in the face of fixed opposition from the British government, and the party decided to advocate in favour of the independence movement because it would allow a new political system in which Congress could be a major party. By 1905, a division opened between the moderates led by Gokhale, who downplayed public agitation, and the new extremists who advocated agitation, and regarded the pursuit of social remodel as a distraction from nationalism. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who tried to mobilise Hindu Indians by attractive to an explicitly Hindu political identity displayed in the annual public Ganapati festivals he inaugurated in western India, was prominent among the extremists.

Congress refers several prominent political figures. Dadabhai Naoroji, a section of the sister Indian National Association, was elected president of the party in 1886 and was the first Indian Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons 1892–1895. Congress also included Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Jinnah was a member of the moderate group in the Congress, favouring Hindu–Muslim unity in achieving self-government. Later he became the leader of the Muslim League and instrumental in the creation of Pakistan. Congress was transformed into a mass movement by Surendranath Banerjee during the partition of Bengal in 1905, and the resultant Swadeshi movement.

Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915. His efforts in South Africa were well known non only among the educated but also among the masses. During 1917 and 1918, Mahatma Gandhi was involved in three struggles– known as Champaran Satyagraha, Ahmedabad Mill Strike and Kheda Satyagraha. After the First World War, the party became associated with Gandhi, who remained its unofficial spiritual leader and icon. He formed an alliance with the Khilafat Movement in 1920 to fight for preservation of the Ottoman Caliphate, and rights for Indians using civil disobedience or as the tool for agitation. In 1923, after the deaths of policemen at Chauri Chaura, Gandhi suspended the agitation.

With the help of the moderate group led by Gokhale, in 1924 Gandhi became president of Congress. The rise of Gandhi's popularity and his satyagraha art of revolution led to support from ]

At the Congress 1929 Lahore session under the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru, prepare independence was declared as the party's goal, declaring 26 January 1930 as Independence Day. The same year, Srinivas Iyenger was expelled from the party for demanding full independence, not just home rule as demanded by Gandhi.

After the passage of the Government of India Act 1935, provincial elections were held in India in the winter of 1936–37 in eleven provinces: Madras, Central Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, United Provinces, Bombay Presidency, Assam, NWFP, Bengal, Punjab, and Sindh. Theresults of the elections were declared in February 1937. The Indian National Congress gained energy in eight of them – the three exceptions being Bengal, Punjab, and Sindh. The All-India Muslim League failed to form a Government in any Province. Congress Ministers Resigned in October and November 1939 in Protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's declaration that India was a belligerent in the Second World War without consulting the Indian people.

In 1939, Subhas Chandra Bose, the elected President of India in both 1938 and 1939, resigned from Congress over the choice of the workings committee. Congress was an umbrella organisation, sheltering radical socialists, traditionalists, and Hindu and Muslim conservatives. Mahatma Gandhi expelled any the socialist groupings, including the Congress Socialist Party, the Krishak Praja Party, and the Swaraj Party, along with Subhas Chandra Bose, in 1939.

In 1946, the British tried the Indian soldiers who had fought alongside the Japanese during World War II in the INA trials. In response, Congress helped form the INA Defence Committee, which assembled a legal team to defend the case of the soldiers of the Azad Hind government. The team included several famous lawyers, including Bhulabhai Desai, Asaf Ali, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The same year, Congress members initially supported the sailors who led the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, but they withdrew support at a critical juncture and the mutiny failed.