New Delhi: It is a measure of the political turbulence former prime minister Indira Gandhi faced after losing the 1977 general elections held following the Emergency that her breakaway faction of Congress sought shelter in a bungalow directly opposite a building housing the political surveillance unit of the Intelligence Bureau (IB).
In January 1978, a group of Indira loyalists, including Buta Singh, moved into 24, Akbar Road, which would serve as the headquarters of the Congress party over the next four decades. It was Singh, who later became the Home Minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government from 1986 to 1989, who had picked the Type VII bungalow as a prospective option for the party’s new office.
Forty-six years later, the Congress is preparing to shift its base again—this time to a six-storey building on Kotla Road, near Feroz Shah Kotla, which took one-and-a-half decades to come up, a period which saw the party’s political fortunes take an unprecedented dip that came hand in hand with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ascendance under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The new headquarters will document the Congress’s history, beginning with the tenure of Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee as its first president in 1885 to the incumbent president Mallikarjun Kharge. Four floors of the building have been designed to offer visitors a walk through experience of its past and present. It will also have a library with a huge collection of books, a senior Congress leader told ThePrint.
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Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal announced Tuesday evening that the Congress would inaugurate its new headquarters on 15 January.
“Situated at 9A, Kotla Road, New Delhi, the Indira Gandhi Bhawan is designed to meet the evolving needs of the party and its leaders, featuring modern facilities to support administrative, organisational, and strategic activities. This iconic building reflects the Congress party’s forward-looking vision while paying homage to its extraordinary past, which has shaped the political and social fabric of India,” Venugopal said.
The party would not vacate the 24, Akbar Road premises though, Congress insiders said. Meanwhile, many wings of the party such as Seva Dal, which currently operates out of the Youth Congress premises on Raisina Road, have been sounded out to shift to the new headquarters. Many other frontal organisations will do it over the next months, in phases.
When the Congress, under Indira, first moved to 24, Akbar Road, it was allotted to the party’s then Rajya Sabha MP from Andhra Pradesh G. Venkataswamy. Buta Singh and other Indira loyalists had initially explored the option of converting the bungalow of Maragatham Chandrasekar, the party’s Rajya Sabha MP from Tamil Nadu, located on 3, Janpath Road into its office.
They had also considered moving into the residence of Congress stalwart from Uttar Pradesh Kamlapati Tripathi, writes author and journalist Rasheed Kidwai in his book, ‘24, Akbar Road: A Short History of The People Behind the Fall and Rise of the Congress’.
“Tripathi, a devout Hindu from Benaras, was both accommodating and generous, but for Buta and the other AICC office-bearers the hours-long daily hawan posed a hindrance. Apart from making a daily excuse for skipping the religious ritual, A.P. Sharma, himself a Brahmin, said he could never bring himself to work in a ‘temple-like atmosphere’.
“Buta then zeroed in on G. Venkatswamy, a Lok Sabha MP from Andhra Pradesh, who lived alone at 24 Akbar Road. Venkatswamy’s bachelor residence was ‘open house’ for many Youth Congress leaders, who would visit 10 Janpath (then the headquarters of the Indian Youth Congress), but use 24 Akbar Road for their siestas and other recreational activities,” Kidwai writes.
The two bungalows remain attached with an internal gate that allows the members of the Gandhi family to walk into the party headquarters from 10 Janpath, now the official residence of Sonia Gandhi. Sonia had moved into the house with her husband and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989 after he lost power.
Over the years, 24, Akbar Road has undergone several phases of construction of additional rooms, outhouses, many times in flagrant violation of official norms. The main bungalow, built by Sir Edwin Lutyens, in its premises had fallen into disrepair by the time the Congress made it home in 1978.
But it had a storied past, having served as the residence of the Burmese ambassador Daw Khin Kyi, the mother of Myanmar’s former leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who herself stayed in the house as a teenager.
“In his book, The Perfect Hostage, biographer Justin Wintle observes that it was at 24 Akbar Road that Suu experienced luxury for the first time in her life, ‘even if her mother did her best to replicate the frugality that had characterized their life in Rangoon’. It was here that Suu learnt ikebana and here that she played with Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi in the sprawling and magnificent gardens,” Kidwai adds in his book.
24, Akbar Road had its fair share of controversies too. After his death in 2004, former prime minister P. V. Narasimha Rao’s body was not allowed in its premises, and the cortege was parked outside for people to pay their respects.
In their books, Congress veterans Natwar Singh and K.V. Thomas attributed the bitterness between Rao and Sonia to the latter’s unhappiness over the slow pace of the probe into the 1991 assassination of her husband, Rajiv.
Last month, the mortal remains of former prime minister Manmohan Singh, who was handpicked by Rao in 1991 to be the finance minister in his Cabinet, was brought to 24, Akbar Road for people to pay respects. Singh’s family members were also present on the occasion along with the entire top leadership of the party.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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