The much-prolonged work at the new Congress headquarter is nearing completion and the party leadership is aiming to shift the central office from 24 Akbar Road to what will be called “Indira Bhawan” at 9A Kotla Marg on the Independence Day. “The new office is almost getting ready. We need to get a couple of more clearances from the local authorities. Our plan is to move into the new Congress headquarters ‘Indira Bhawan’ on August 15. That is the schedule we are working on,” a key AICC functionary told ET. The new six-storeyed Congress headquarters – with offices of Congress president and AICC general secretaries, other functionaries, conference rooms, library and research centres and space for frontal organisations and more – is located on Deendayal Upadhyay Marg and the party leadership, for obvious reasons, would like to use the address as 9A Kotla Marg, on the other side of the sbuilding adjacent to the Rouse Avenue.
Started in 2016, the work is completing six years behind the schedule, thus missing earlier deadlines with leaders often complaining about paucity of funds and technical delays.
The historic 24 Akbar Road has been the party headquarters ever since Indira Gandhi formed the breakaway party, the Congress (I), after the post-Emergency Congress split in 1978. In that rush, the Indira Gandhi loyalist and then MP G Venkataswamy gave his official residence to house the ‘Indira Congress’ at 24 Akbar Road, growing into the “ruling party” and the ‘real Congress’, making it a 46-year old journey of scaling heights of success and then touching lows of decline – and now nurturing the hope of revival as it prepares for the ‘durbar shift’ to new headquarters. In between, Congress had planned and built, with financial contributions from party functionaries from across the country, another (proposed) headquarters – Jawahar Bhavan at Dr Rajendra Prasad Road – which, however, was changed post Rajiv Gandhi assassination into the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. While the leadership has had to periodically renew the lease to extend the possession of 24, Akbar Road, the new headquarters, “Indira Bhawan”, to which the Grand Old Party will finally be moving into is built on the land allotted to the party.
