Subhas Chandra Bose vs Pattabhi Sitaramayya was 1st big fight for Congress president's post

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, August 28

The post of Congress president has seen only a handful of contests throughout the party’s 137-year history with consensus dominating the selection process.

The older practice involved inviting a motivator, a leader, to preside over the annual session of the Indian National Congress. The invitee would hold the Congress president’s office till the subsequent annual session when another leader would be requested to come and preside.

Records reveal that the first serious contest for the Congress president’s post was held in 1939 between Subhas Chandra Bose and Pattabhi Sitaramayya. The latter had the backing of Congress top brass led by Gandhi but Bose won.

Writing in his book, ‘The Coalition Years’’, late president and former Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee noted about Bose’s victory over Sitaramayya, “Though Sitaramayya was backed by senior leaders like Gandhiji, Bose was the more popular icon enthusiastically supported by the youth. Subhas Chandra Bose won a massive victory. But it created an awkward situation resulting in Gandhiji insisting that Sitaramayya’s defeat was his own defeat. The ensuing estranged relationship between Gandhiji and Bose in the late 1930s was an unfortunate chapter in the history of the Congress.”

Again in 1950, the election for the post was fought between JB Kripalani and Purushottam Das Tandon ahead of the party’s Nashik session. Tandon emerged victorious but later resigned as Congress president following differences with then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who held the twin posts of party chief and the PM between 1951 and 1955. Nehru relinquished Congress presidency in 1955 and UN Dhebar succeeded him.

Pranab Mukherjee, while reflecting on the issue of election to the party’s highest post, noted in his memoirs that he personally preferred consensus for the position. “I personally subscribe to the theory that certain offices should not be sought, rather they should be offered. I consider the Congress presidency to be one such office.”

Congress history shows that between 1947 and 1964 and again from 1971 to 1977, the Congress president was mostly the nominee of the party’s prime minister.

In recent times, Sitaram Kesri won the Congress president’s election in 1997 defeating rivals Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot.

Later, Kesri was dethroned unceremoniously through a March 5, 1998 CWC resolution and Sonia Gandhi, who had become a primary member of the AICC only a year ago in the party’s August 1997 Kolkata session, was asked to accept the office.

She was formally elected Congress president by AICC on April 6, 1998 and remains the longest serving with a break in 2017-2019 when her son was elected briefly until he resigned after the party’s Lok Sabha election defeat in 2019.

In 2000, Jitendra Prasad had challenged Sonia Gandhi in the party chief’s election and lost.

For 22 years now, there has been no contest for the post. Rahul Gandhi was elected unanimously in 2017 because he had no challenger.

The Congress had in 2010 amended its Constitution to mandate internal elections every five years. It remains to be seen if there will be a contest this time.