List of presidents of the Indian National Congress

The president of the Indian National Congress is the chief executive of the Indian National Congress (INC), one of the principal political parties in India.^[1] Constitutionally, the president is elected by an electoral college composed of members drawn from the Pradesh Congress Committees and members of the All India Congress Committee (AICC).^[2] In the event of any emergency because of any cause such as the death or resignation of the president elected as above, the most senior general secretary discharges the routine functions of the president until the Working Committee appoints a provisional president pending the election of a regular president by the AICC.^[2] The president of the party has effectively been the party's national leader, head of the party's organisation, head of the Working Committee, the chief spokesman, and all chief Congress committees.^[3]

President of the Indian National Congress
Incumbent Mallikarjun Kharge since 26 October 2022 (2022-10-26)
Residence	24 Akbar Road, New Delhi
Appointer	Committee consisting of members of the Indian National Congress from the National and State Committees
Term length	no term limit
Constituting instrument	Constitution of the Indian National Congress[1]
Precursor	Sonia Gandhi
Formation	28 December 1885 (1885-12-28)
First holder	Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee (1885–1886)
Website	Official website

After the party's foundation in December 1885, Womesh Chandra Banerjee became its first president. From 1885 to 1933, the presidency had a term of one year only. From 1933 onwards, there was no such fixed term for the president.^[4] During Jawaharlal Nehru's premiership, he rarely held the Presidency of INC, even though he was always head of the Parliamentary Party. Despite being a party with a structure, Congress under Indira Gandhi did not hold any organisational elections after 1978.^[5] In 1978, Gandhi split from the INC and formed a new opposition party, popularly called Congress (I), which the national election commission declared to be the real Indian National Congress for the 1980 general election.^[6][7][8] Gandhi institutionalised the practice of having the same person as the Congress president and the prime minister of India after the formation of Congress (I).^[9] Her successors Rajiv Gandhi and P. V. Narasimha Rao also continued that practice. Nonetheless, in 2004, when the Congress was voted back into power, Manmohan Singh became the first and only prime minister not to be the president of the party since establishment of the practice of the president holding both positions.^[10]

A total of 61 people have served as the president of the Indian National Congress since its formation.^[11] Sonia Gandhi is the longest serving president of the party, having held the office for over twenty years from 1998 to 2017 and from 2019 to 2022. The latest election of president was held on 17 October 2022,^[12] in which Mallikarjun Kharge became the new president defeating Shashi Tharoor in the 2022 Indian National Congress presidential election.^[13]

List of party presidents

The founding years (1885–1900)

List of presidents during 1885–1900

No.	Year(s) of presidency	Leader	Portrait	Place of conference	Reference(s)[14]
1	December 1885	Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee		Bombay	[15] [16] [17]
2	December 1886	Dadabhai Naoroji		Calcutta	[18]
3	December 1887	Badruddin Tyabji		Madras	[19] [20]
4	December 1888	George Yule		Allahabad	[21]
5	December 1889	William Wedderburn		Bombay	[22]
6	December 1890	Pherozeshah Mehta		Calcutta	[22]
7	December 1891	Panapakkam Anandacharlu		Nagpur	[23]
8	December 1892	Womesh Chandra Banerjee		Allahabad	[15] [16] [17]
9	December 1893	Dadabhai Naoroji		Lahore	[18]
10	December 1894	Alfred Webb		Madras	[22]
11	December 1895	Surendranath Banerjee		Poona	[22]
12	December 1896	Rahimtulla M. Sayani		Calcutta	[22]
13	December 1897	C. Sankaran Nair		Amaravati	[24]
14	December 1898	Anandamohan Bose		Madras	[24]
15	December 1899	Romesh Chunder Dutt		Lucknow	[24]
16	December 1900	N. G. Chandavarkar		Lahore	[24]

The pre-independence era (1901–1947)

List of presidents during 1901–1947

No.	Year(s) of presidency	Name	Portrait	Place of conference	Reference(s)[14]
17	December 1901	Dinshaw Edulji Wacha		Calcutta	[25]
18	December 1902	Surendranath Banerjee		Ahmedabad	[22]
19	December 1903	Lalmohan Ghosh		Madras	[23]
20	December 1904	Henry John Stedman Cotton		Bombay	[26]
21	December 1905	Gopal Krishna Gokhale		Benares	[23]
22	December 1906	Dadabhai Naoroji		Calcutta	[18]
23	December 1907	Rashbihari Ghosh		Surat	[23]
24	December 1908			Madras	[23]
25	December 1909	Madan Mohan Malaviya		Lahore	[23]
26	December 1910	William Wedderburn		Allahabad	[22]
27	December 1911	Bishan Narayan Dar		Calcutta	[23]
28	December 1912	Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar		Bankipore	[23]
29	December 1913	Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur		Karachi	[23]
30	April 1914	Bhupendra Nath Bose		Madras	[23]
31	December 1915	Satyendra Prasanno Sinha		Bombay	[24]
32	December 1916	Ambica Charan Mazumdar		Lucknow	[24]
33	December 1917	Annie Besant		Calcutta	[24]
34	August 1918	Syed Hasan Imam		Bombay (special session)	[24]
35	December 1918	Madan Mohan Malaviya		Delhi	[23]
36	December 1919	Motilal Nehru		Amritsar	[24]
37	1920	Lala Lajpat Rai		Calcutta (Special Session)	[24]
38	December 1920	C. Vijayaraghavachariar		Nagpur	[27]
39	December 1921	Hakim Ajmal Khan		Ahmedabad	[27]
40	December 1922	Chittaranjan Das		Gaya	[27]
41	1923	Mohammad Ali Jauhar		Kakinada	[27]
42	September 1923	Abul Kalam Azad		Delhi (Special Session)	[27]
43	December 1924	Mahatma Gandhi		Belgaum	[28]
44	April 1925	Sarojini Naidu		Kanpur	[27]
45	December 1926	S. Srinivasa Iyengar		Guwahati	[27]
46	December 1927	Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari		Madras	[27]
47	1928	Motilal Nehru		Calcutta	[24]
48	1929	Jawaharlal Nehru		Lahore	[27]
49	1930			Karachi	[27]
50	1931	Vallabhbhai Patel		Karachi	[27]
51	1932	Madan Mohan Malaviya		Delhi	[23]
52	1933	Nellie Sengupta		Calcutta	[29]
53	1934	Rajendra Prasad		Bombay	[30]
54	1935			Lucknow	[30]
55	1936	Jawaharlal Nehru		Lucknow	[27]
56	1937			Faizpur	[27]
57	1938	Subhas Chandra Bose		Haripura	[28] [31]
58	1939			Tewar, Madhya Pradesh (then Tripuri)	[28] [31]
59	1939 (March)	Rajendra Prasad		Tewar, Madhya Pradesh (then Tripuri)	[30]
60	1940–46 Duration of World war 2	Abul Kalam Azad		Ramgarh	[27]
61	1946 (July–Sept)	Jawaharlal Nehru			[32]
62	1946	J. B. Kripalani		Meerut	[33]
63	1947

The post-independence era (1948–present)

List of presidents since independence

No.	Year(s) of Presidency	Name	Portrait	Place of Conference	Reference(s)[14]
64	1948	Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya		Jaipur	[33]
65	1949			Jaipur
66	1950	Purushottam Das Tandon		Nashik	[33]
67	1951	Jawaharlal Nehru		Delhi	[34] [31]
68	1952			Delhi
69	1953			Hyderabad	[34] [31]
70	1954			Kalyani	[34] [31]
71	1955	U. N. Dhebar		Avadi	[23]
72	1956			Amritsar	[23]
73	1957			Indore	[23]
74	1958			Gauhati	[23]
75	1959			Nagpur	[23]
76	1959	Indira Gandhi		Delhi (special session)	[35] [36]
73	1960	Neelam Sanjiva Reddy		Bengaluru	[33]
74	1961			Bhavnagar	[33]
75	1962–1963			Patna	[33]
76	1964	K. Kamaraj		Bhubaneswar	[33]
77	1965			Durgapur	[33]
78	1966–1967			Jaipur	[33]
79	1968	S. Nijalingappa		Hyderabad	[33]
80	1969			Faridabad	[33]
81	1970–1971	Jagjivan Ram		Mumbai	[33]
82	1972–74	Shankar Dayal Sharma		Kolkata	[33]
83	1975–77	Devakanta Barua		Chandigarh	[33]
84	1977–78	Kasu Brahmananda Reddy		Chandigarh	[37]
85	1978–83	Indira Gandhi		New Delhi	[35] [36]
85	1983			Kolkata	[35] [36]
86	1985–1991	Rajiv Gandhi		Mumbai	[38] [39] [40]
87	1992	P. V. Narasimha Rao		Tirupati	[23]
88	1993			Surajkund	[23]
89	1994			Delhi	[23]
90	1996–1998	Sitaram Kesri		Kolkata	[23]
91	1998–2001	Sonia Gandhi		New Delhi	[41] [42]
92	2001–2004			Bengaluru	[41] [42]
93	2004–2006			New Delhi	[41] [42]
94	2006–2010			Hyderabad	[41] [42]
95	2010–2017			New Delhi	[41] [42]
96	2017–2019	Rahul Gandhi		New Delhi	[43]
97	2019–2022	Sonia Gandhi		Jaipur	[41] [42]
98	2022–Incumbent	Mallikarjun Kharge		New Delhi	[44]

See also

• List of chief ministers from the Indian National Congress
• List of presidents of the Bharatiya Janata Party
• List of state presidents of the Indian National Congress

References

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External links

• All India Congress Committee – AICC Official Indian National Congress website
• Sessions List