Indian National Congress (Organization)

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The Indian National Congress (Organization) , or Congress (O) for short (abbreviation: INC (O) ) was a party in India that existed between 1969 and 1977. It emerged from the split in the Congress Party in 1969 and merged with the newly founded Janata Party in 1977 .

history

Election results of the Congress Party in the first Lok Sabha elections
choice won
parliamentary seats 		in
percent †
1951-1952 364 74.4%
1957 371 75.1%
1962 361 73.1%
1967 283 54.4%
† The percentages are based on the number of seats
. The Congress Party did not put up
its own candidates in all constituencies.
In relation to the number of candidates
, the numbers would be slightly higher.

The Indian National Congress ("Congress Party"), which at the time of British India had been the main sponsor of the independence movement, established itself as the dominant political party after India's independence in 1947. Benefiting from the current relative majority voting system based on the British model ( first-past-the-post ), the Congress Party was able to win broad majorities , although it only ever received around 40 to 50% of the votes in elections to the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha . Jawaharlal Nehru , who ruled largely unchallenged, was elected first prime minister . In 1964 Nehru died and the question of his successor arose. Gulzarilal Nanda was temporarily prime minister until the leaders of the Congress party agreed on Lal Bahadur Shastri as a compromise candidate for prime ministerial office. However, Shastri died surprisingly already 1 ½ years after taking office at the conference in Tashkent on January 11, 1966. Therefore the question of succession arose again. This time, after another interim from Gulzarilal Nanda Indira Gandhi , Nehru's daughter was elected Prime Minister. It belonged more to the left wing of the party, which advocated a more “socialist” policy (nationalization of banks, state regulation of the economy, abolition of compensation payments to the former Indian princes). Indira was supported in this by a number of younger politicians, the so-called "Young Turks" ( "Young Turks" ). This was not without controversy. The old party guard, the so-called "Syndicate", to which influential Congress politicians and chief ministers from various states belonged - K. Kamaraj ( Madras ), SK Patil ( Maharashtra ), Atulya Ghosh ( West Bengal ), S. Nijalingappa ( Mysore ), NS Reddy ( Andhra Pradesh ) - took a much more conservative line and tried to slow down the prime minister out of her own power interests and to limit her leeway. One of Indira Gandhi's competitors was Morarji Desai , who had also aspired to become Prime Minister, but was inferior to Indira.

In the parliamentary elections in February 1967, the Congress party performed disappointingly. It only narrowly reached the absolute majority of mandates by comparison. In the presidential election in May of the same year , the opposition parties managed for the first time to put up a joint candidate who was able to win a significant share of the vote, even though the congressional candidate won the election. In the elections to the parliaments of the states of Bihar , Kerala , Orissa , Madras , Punjab and West Bengal in March 1967, the opposition parties won and then appointed the chief ministers. The opposition therefore felt that it was on the up and Indira Gandhi came under more pressure from the “Syndicate”. However, Indira Gandhi tried to push through her political ideas. A decisive trial of strength came in the 1969 presidential election , in which two candidates from the Congress Party faced each other, VV Giri, supported by Indira Gandhi and her supporters, and Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, supported by the "Syndicate" and the official party leadership . The former won the election very narrowly.

In the same year there was an open rift between the party leadership and Indira Gandhi. On November 12, 1969, Indira was formally expelled from the Congress Party by Party President S. Nijalingappa with the support of the Working Committee of the Congress Party, which was dominated by Indira's opponents , on the grounds that she did not adhere to party discipline and that a “personality cult had been built around her "Have ( " fostering a cult of personality " ). The MPs of the Congress Party in Parliament were asked to elect a new Prime Minister. At the meeting of the 432 parliamentarians from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on the following day, however, it became clear that Indira Gandhi still had the support of a large part of the parliamentarians and she was trusted. Opponents rallied two days later and 111 members of Congress from the Congress elected Morarji Desai as their chairman. Of the opposition parties represented in parliament, the two communist parties CPM and CPI , Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and a number of independents supported Indira Gandhi, while Samyukta Socialist Party , Swatantra and Jan Sangh Desai supported. The two factions of the Congress Party gathered in two different meetings in December, on the one hand the old Congress under Nijalingappa in Ahmedabad and on the other hand the Indira faction in Bombay . At the latter meeting Jagjivan Ram was elected the new party president at the instigation of Indira.

In the period that followed, both factions consolidated into their own parties, which were recognized as such by the Indian Election Commission, the Indian National Congress (Organization) , or “Congress (O)” under Desai, and the Indian National Congress (Requisition) , or “Congress (R) ”under Indira Gandhi. Unofficially, the abbreviations “O” and “R” were translated as old and ruling or real - the “old” congress and the “ruling” or “actual” congress. Both parties claimed to be the legitimate successor to the old Congress party.

In December 1970 announced Indira Gandhi the holding of elections in 1971. In the election stood Indira Congress (R) and the Congress (O), the other parties ( January Sangh , Swatantra and the Samyukta Socialist Party ) an election alliance Grand Alliance had entered, opposite. The election was impressively won by Indiras Congress (R) with 43.7% of the vote and a two-thirds majority of the seats (352 of 518). Congress (O) won just 10.4% of the vote and 16 constituencies (3.1%).

After the time of the state of emergency 1975-77 , the Congress (O) merged with three other opposition parties to form the Janata Party . The Janata Party won the 1977 general election and Morarji Desai was elected Prime Minister in 1977.

Prominent persons of the Congress (O)

Web links

  • Robert L. Hardgrave: The Congress in India - Crisis and Split. Asian Survey, Vol. 10, No. 3 (March 1970), pp. 256-262. JSTOR 2642578

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Election Results - Full Statistical Reports. Indian Election Commission, accessed on October 3, 2014 (English, election results of all Indian elections to the Lok Sabha and the parliaments of the states since independence).
  2. ^ Sandeep Bhardwaj: The Syndicate: Kingmakers of India. revisitingindia.com, July 1, 2013, accessed May 15, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Ram Singh Awana: Pressure Politics in Congress Party. Northern Book Center, New Delhi. P. 246 ISBN 81-85119-43-0 .
  4. ^ A b Robert L. Hardgrave: The Congress in India - Crisis and Split. Asian Survey, Vol. 10, No. 3 (March 1970), pp. 256-262. JSTOR 2642578
  5. ↑ 1969: Split Wide Open. indiatoday, July 2, 2007, accessed May 15, 2015 .