An inside view of the newly inaugurated ‘Indira Bhawan’, the new party headquarters of the Indian National Congress, in New Delhi on Saturday, January 18, 2025
| Photo Credit: ANI

Indira Bhawan, the new Congress headquarters in Delhi, strives to balance the past and the present. Amidst Ikea furniture and energy efficient fittings, the building recollects the party’s history in 246 rare photographs, some of them a painful reminder of leaders who left after publicly decrying the Congress and its leadership. 

Three days after inaugurating the new premises, the party threw it open to the media for a tour. The building has been in the making for 18 years. Land was allotted to the party in November 2007. The foundation stone of the new party headquarters was laid in 2009, and the final ‘all clear’ certificate from the relevant authorities was secured only on January 14 this year. 

Painted in shades of cream and brown, the building is spread over a total area of 2,100 square metres, and has its own auditorium, with 276 seats. There are 134 trees, 8,675 plants, and 264 works of art and paintings. Mr. Maken,  party treasurer, speaking before the tour, said that the building had been constructed at a cost of ₹200-₹225 crore, much of it with contributions by its regular workers. 

The cafeteria features paintings by Nandalal Bose, made on the request of Mahatma Gandhi for the Haripura Congress session of 1938. There are pictures of the meetings of the Planning Commission from 1985, with the late former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi seen sitting along with three of the then future Prime Ministers — Narasimha Rao, V.P. Singh, and Manmohan Singh; and one future President of India, K.R. Narayanan. Narasimha Rao, whose images found no space in the old party headquarters at 24, Akbar Road, has been given pride of place in the new building. 

But perhaps the most arresting pictures are the ones with the party’s senior leaders, who defected to other parties looking for a brighter political future. One such on the ground floor is that of Sonia Gandhi leading a march accompanied by Congress leaders, including Suresh Pachouri, Rita Bahuguna Joshi, and P. Sudhakar Reddy, all now with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, who quit the party after launching a stinging attack on Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s leadership, also makes an occasional appearance on the walls. 

Another interesting photograph is that of Ms. Sonia Gandhi and late party president Sitaram Kesari at a campaign rally in Rohtak in January 1998. A few months later, Kesari was forced out and Ms. Gandhi took over as the party president.