It was a cold January day in 1978 when a handful of Indira Gandhi family loyalists and karmacharis moved into 24, Akbar Road, which would become the Congress headquarters for nearly 50 years. And it was a cold morning on January 15, 2025, when the Congress, a 144-year-old party, moved into the buildingIt was designed to be its headquarters from a Type-VII Lutyens’ Zone bungalow, intended for residential use.
Both the Congress and the BJP, now have their headquarters within a kilometer from each otherthey were working out of Lutyens’ Delhi bungalows. The story of how these two national teams found their new headquarters reveals not only their history, but also their values.
The BJP in 1985 was allotted a type VIII bungalow at 11, Ashoka Road, which continued to be its headquarters until it shifted to a five-storey building on Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg in February 2018.
It took the BJP, which first felt power in Delhi in 1996, less than forty years after its founding in 1980, to build a headquarters that takes care of its modern needs, while the Congress continues to illegally add rooms to 24, Akbar. A roadside bungalow to house its staff.
The look of the Congress office has “changed a lot” over the years, and its “eight rooms have expanded to 34”, writes veteran journalist and political analyst Rasheed Kidwai in his book 24 Akbar Road.
Most of these buildings, in Lutyens’ Bungalow Zone, are illegal, Kidwai writes, “but successive political regimes have looked the other way”.
As the BJP grew electorally, it saw the need for modern offices to facilitate the organization’s growth.
It was in 2016 that the BJP “started building physical structures in the form of a modern party office in each state of India”, write Bhupender Yadav and Ila Patnaik in their book The Rise of the BJP: The Making of the World’s Largest Political Party. The party.
“It was felt that the group’s existing headquarters, at 11 Ashoka Road in Lutyens Delhi, was inadequate or equipped with digital facilities. It was decided to build a new headquarters,” Yadav and Patnaik wrote.
While the BJP headquarters at Deen Dayal Uadhyay Marg was built in one-and-a-half years, the Congress office at 9A Kotla Marg took 15 years to complete. These properties were allocated to parties after a High Court ruling in 2005-06 which banned the use of Lutyens’ Bungalows as registered party offices.
Lutyens’ move to Delhi must have been easier for the BJP than for the Congress, which used to have party offices near the party chief’s residences.
Rasheed Kidwai says “the benefit of [24, Akbar Road] The house had a wicket gate connecting it to 10, Janpath”, which is now the residence of party matriarch Sonia Gandhi. entered politics in 1998The two addresses are connected by a wicket gate, which is the treasure of the Congress.
Even when Indira Gandhi was leading the Congress, her home and work addresses were not far apart.
His residence 1, of Safdarjung was 2 km away from 24, Akbar Road. In fact, Indira’s personal office, just behind the residence, was at 1, Akbar Road.
While the BJP, its leaders, including Narendra Modi, have tried to be tech-savviness, and use digital technology well, the Congress seems to be lagging behind though Rajiv Gandhi is trying to use its power.
That was reflected in its office at 24, Akbar Road, which was “very old” in terms of technology, according to Kidwai. He writes that “all the communication or organization of the office goes in a visible way from desk to desk” with the help of several peons and messengers.
It is not that the Congress, India’s first political party, did not feel the need for a new party building as the office at 24, Akbar Road has exploded.
Rajiv Gandhi, in the mid-80s, had planned a modern Congress office on Rajendra Prasad Road. Members of the party in Parliament even put a month’s salary into it, but the plan was scrapped there Rajiv was assassinated in May 1991.
The plot was “lent” to the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation as a “kind gesture” in the “emotional atmosphere” after his assassination.
So, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation headed by Sonia Gandhi now stands at the place where Rajiv had planned the modern Congress headquarters.
HOW 24, AKBAR ROAD BECAME THE LADY OF THE CONGRESS
24, Akbar Road was historically not the headquarters of the Congress.
The 7-year-old bungalow, Jantar Mantar, was allotted to the Congress in its place in 1959, the year Indira Gandhi took over as its president.
After the split of the party in 1969, the Congress (O) led by Moarji Desai took over 7, Jantar Mantar. In 1971, the Congress led by Indira made 5, Rajendra Prasad Road, its headquarters.
That was the first of two times that the Indira-led Congress had to shift its office.
Indira Gandhi and her loyalists had to go for the party office for the second time after Jagjivan Ram split the Congress in 1977. Indira, who had been defeated by the Janata Party in the post-Emergency elections, was looking for political survival.
It was then, in the cold January of 1978, that members of the party led by Indira moved to 24, Akbar Road. That was the residence allotted to the Congress Rajya Sabha MP, G Venkatswamy.
SWACHH BHARAT NEEDS CAMPAIGN AT 24, AKBAR ROAD
There were few infrastructural challenges faced by party workers at Lutyens’ Bungalow, which was built to withstand the pressure of a large political organization.
One of them was the lack of toilets.
The All India Congress Committee (AICC) chief and general secretary had the comfort of toilets attached to their rooms, but there were smelly toilets for hundreds of workers and visitors who came to the party’s central office.
In the five-storey central office at Indira Bhawan, there will be no problems with toilets or space.
“Women were in a worse situation because they did not have a single dedicated bathroom even at a time when Sonia and her party seemed determined to push the Women’s Reservation Bill,” Kidwai wrote. The Bill, which reserved 33% of the seats in the Assemblies and Lok Sabha, was passed in 2024.
The story of the Congress and BJP headquarters not only tells the story of how Indira Gandhi survived political challenges and Rajiv Gandhi could not build a modern Congress headquarters, it also reveals the priorities of these two parties and their areas of focus. It is a matter of HQ, not any scale of intelligence quotient (IQ) or emotion quotient (EQ) that reveals why two groups behave the way they do.