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National 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
Precursor	Sonia Gandhi
Formation	28 December 1885 (1885-12-28)
First holder	Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee (1885–1886)
Website	Official website

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The national president of the Indian National Congress is the chief executive of the Indian National Congress (INC), one of the principal political parties in India. 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). 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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). 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.

A total of 61 people have served as the president of the Indian National Congress since its formation. 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, in which Mallikarjun Kharge became the new president defeating Shashi Tharoor in the 2022 Indian National Congress presidential election.

List of party presidents during the founding years (1885–1900)

List of presidents during 1885–1900

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

The pre-independence era (1901–1947)

List of presidents during 1901–1947

No.	Year(s) of presidency	Name	Portrait	Place of conference	Reference(s)
17	December 1901	Dinshaw Edulji Wacha		Calcutta
18	December 1902	Surendranath Banerjee		Ahmedabad
19	December 1903	Lalmohan Ghosh		Madras
20	December 1904	Henry John Stedman Cotton		Bombay
21	December 1905	Gopal Krishna Gokhale		Benares
22	December 1906	Dadabhai Naoroji		Calcutta
23	December 1907	Rashbihari Ghosh		Surat
24	December 1908			Madras
25	December 1909	Madan Mohan Malaviya		Lahore
26	December 1910	William Wedderburn		Allahabad
27	December 1911	Bishan Narayan Dar		Calcutta
28	December 1912	Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar		Bankipore
29	December 1913	Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur		Karachi
30	April 1914	Bhupendra Nath Bose		Madras
31	December 1915	Satyendra Prasanno Sinha		Bombay
32	December 1916	Ambica Charan Mazumdar		Lucknow
33	December 1917	Annie Besant		Calcutta
34	August 1918	Syed Hasan Imam		Bombay (special session)
35	December 1918	Madan Mohan Malaviya		Delhi
36	December 1919	Motilal Nehru		Amritsar
37	1920	Lala Lajpat Rai		Calcutta (Special Session)
38	December 1920	C. Vijayaraghavachariar		Nagpur
39	December 1921	Hakim Ajmal Khan		Ahmedabad
40	December 1922	Chittaranjan Das		Gaya
41	1923	Mohammad Ali Jauhar		Kakinada
42	September 1923	Abul Kalam Azad		Delhi (Special Session)
43	December 1924	Mahatma Gandhi		Belgaum
44	April 1925	Sarojini Naidu		Kanpur
45	December 1926	S. Srinivasa Iyengar		Guwahati
46	December 1927	Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari		Madras
47	1928	Motilal Nehru		Calcutta
48	1929	Jawaharlal Nehru		Lahore
49	1930			Karachi
50	1931	Vallabhbhai Patel		Karachi
51	1932	Madan Mohan Malaviya		Delhi
52	1933	Nellie Sengupta		Calcutta
53	1934	Rajendra Prasad		Bombay
54	1935			Lucknow
55	1936	Jawaharlal Nehru		Lucknow
56	1937			Faizpur
57	1938	Subhas Chandra Bose		Haripura
58	1939			Tewar, Madhya Pradesh (then Tripuri)
59	1939 (March)	Rajendra Prasad		Tewar, Madhya Pradesh (then Tripuri)
60	1940–46 Duration of World war 2	Abul Kalam Azad		Ramgarh
61	1946 (July–Sept)	Jawaharlal Nehru
62	1946	J. B. Kripalani		Meerut
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)
64	1948	Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya		Jaipur
65	1949			Jaipur
66	1950	Purushottam Das Tandon		Nashik
67	1951	Jawaharlal Nehru		Delhi
68	1952			Delhi
69	1953			Hyderabad
70	1954			Kalyani
71	1955	U. N. Dhebar		Avadi
72	1956			Amritsar
73	1957			Indore
74	1958			Gauhati
75	1959			Nagpur
76	1959	Indira Gandhi		Delhi (special session)
73	1960	Neelam Sanjiva Reddy		Bengaluru
74	1961			Bhavnagar
75	1962	Damodaram Sanjivayya		Patna
75	1962–1963	Neelam Sanjiva Reddy		Patna
76	1964	K. Kamaraj		Bhubaneswar
77	1965			Durgapur
78	1966–1967			Jaipur
79	1968	S. Nijalingappa		Hyderabad
80	1969			Faridabad
81	1970–1971	Jagjivan Ram		Mumbai
82	1972–74	Shankar Dayal Sharma		Kolkata
83	1975–77	Devakanta Barua		Chandigarh
84	1977–78	Kasu Brahmananda Reddy		Chandigarh
85	1978–83	Indira Gandhi		New Delhi
85	1983			Kolkata
86	1985–1991	Rajiv Gandhi		Mumbai
87	1992	P. V. Narasimha Rao		Tirupati
88	1993			Surajkund
89	1994			Delhi
90	1996–1998	Sitaram Kesri		Kolkata
91	1998–2001	Sonia Gandhi		New Delhi
92	2001–2004			Bengaluru
93	2004–2006			New Delhi
94	2006–2010			Hyderabad
95	2010–2017			New Delhi
96	2017–2019	Rahul Gandhi		New Delhi
97	2019–2022	Sonia Gandhi		Jaipur
98	2022–Incumbent	Mallikarjun Kharge		New Delhi

See also

• List of chief ministers from the Indian National Congress
• List of national 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

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Presidents	Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee Dadabhai Naoroji Badruddin Tyabji George Yule William Wedderburn Pherozeshah Mehta Anandacharlu Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee Dadabhai Naoroji Webb Surendranath Banerjee Rahimtulla M. Sayani C. Sankaran Nair Anandamohan Bose Romesh Chunder Dutt N. G. Chandavarkar Dinshaw Edulji Wacha Surendranath Banerjee Lalmohan Ghosh Henry Cotton Gopal Krishna Gokhale Dadabhai Naoroji Rash Behari Ghosh Madan Mohan Malaviya William Wedderburn Bishan Narayan Dar Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur Bhupendra Nath Bose Satyendra Prasanna Sinha, 1st Baron Sinha Ambica Charan Mazumdar Annie Besant Madan Mohan Malaviya Syed Hasan Imam Motilal Nehru Lala Lajpat Rai C. Vijayaraghavachariar Hakim Ajmal Khan Chittaranjan Das Mohammad Ali Jauhar Abul Kalam Azad Mahatma Gandhi Sarojini Naidu S. Srinivasa Iyengar Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari Motilal Nehru Jawaharlal Nehru Vallabhbhai Patel Madan Mohan Malaviya Nellie Sengupta Rajendra Prasad Jawaharlal Nehru Subhas Chandra Bose Abul Kalam Azad J. B. Kripalani Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya Purushottam Das Tandon Jawaharlal Nehru U. N. Dhebar Indira Gandhi Neelam Sanjiva Reddy K. Kamaraj S. Nijalingappa Jagjivan Ram Shankar Dayal Sharma D. K. Barooah Indira Gandhi Rajiv Gandhi P. V. Narasimha Rao Sitaram Kesri Sonia Gandhi Rahul Gandhi Mallikarjun Kharge
Prime ministers	Jawaharlal Nehru Lal Bahadur Shastri Gulzarilal Nanda Indira Gandhi Rajiv Gandhi P. V. Narasimha Rao Manmohan Singh
Leaders	Lok Sabha Jawaharlal Nehru Gulzarilal Nanda Lal Bahadur Shastri Satya Narayan Indira Gandhi Yashwantrao Chavan Chembakassery Mathai Stephen Rajiv Gandhi Arjun Singh P. V. Narasimha Rao Sharad Pawar Sonia Gandhi Pranab Mukherjee Sushilkumar Shinde Mallikarjun Kharge Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury Ravneet Singh Bittu Rahul Gandhi Rajya Sabha N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar Charu Chandra Lal Bahadur Shastri Govind Ballabh Hafiz Mohamad Ibrahim Yashwantrao Chavan Jaisukhlal Hathi M. C. Chagla Jaisukhlal Hathi Kodardas Kalidas Shah Uma Shankar Dikshit Kamalapati Tripathi Pranab Mukherjee V.P. Singh Narayan Dutt Tiwari P. Shiv Shankar Shankarrao Chavan Motilal Vora Ahmed Patel Anand Sharma Jairam Ramesh A. K. Antony Digvijaya Singh P. Chidambaram Abhishek Singhvi Rajeev Shukla Manmohan Singh Ghulam Nabi Azad Mallikarjun Kharge
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Chief ministers	Current Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu Siddaramaiah Anumula Revanth Reddy
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