# List of national presidents of the Indian National Congress

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 | Place of conference | Reference(s) |
| 1 | December 1885 | Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee | Bombay | [15] [16] [17] |
| 2 | December 1886 | Dadabhai Naoroji | Calcutta | |
| 3 | December 1887 | Badruddin Tyabji | Madras | [19] [20] |
| 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 | [15] [16] [17] |
| 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 | 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 | Rashbihari Ghosh | 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 | Jawaharlal Nehru | Karachi | |
| 50 | 1931 | Vallabhbhai Patel | Karachi | |
| 51 | 1932 | Madan Mohan Malaviya | Delhi | |
| 52 | 1933 | Nellie Sengupta | Calcutta | |
| 53 | 1934 | Rajendra Prasad | Bombay | |
| 54 | 1935 | Rajendra Prasad | Lucknow | |
| 55 | 1936 | Jawaharlal Nehru | Lucknow | |
| 56 | 1937 | Jawaharlal Nehru | Faizpur | |
| 57 | 1938 | Subhas Chandra Bose | Haripura | [28] [31] |
| 58 | 1939 | Subhas Chandra Bose | Tewar, Madhya Pradesh (then Tripuri) | [28] [31] |
| 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 | J. B. Kripalani |

## The post-independence era (1948–present)

List of presidents since independence :
| No. | Year(s) of Presidency | Name | Place of Conference | Reference(s) |
| 64 | 1948 | Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya | Jaipur | |
| 65 | 1949 | Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya | Jaipur |
| 66 | 1950 | Purushottam Das Tandon | Nashik | |
| 67 | 1951 | Jawaharlal Nehru | Delhi | [34] [31] |
| 68 | 1952 | Jawaharlal Nehru | Delhi |
| 69 | 1953 | Jawaharlal Nehru | Hyderabad | [34] [31] |
| 70 | 1954 | Jawaharlal Nehru | Kalyani | [34] [31] |
| 71 | 1955 | U. N. Dhebar | Avadi | |
| 72 | 1956 | U. N. Dhebar | Amritsar | |
| 73 | 1957 | U. N. Dhebar | Indore | |
| 74 | 1958 | U. N. Dhebar | Gauhati | |
| 75 | 1959 | U. N. Dhebar | Nagpur | |
| 76 | 1959 | Indira Gandhi | Delhi (special session) | [35] [36] |
| 73 | 1960 | Neelam Sanjiva Reddy | Bengaluru | |
| 74 | 1961 | Neelam Sanjiva Reddy | Bhavnagar | |
| 75 | 1962 | Damodaram Sanjivayya | Patna | |
| 75 | 1962–1963 | Neelam Sanjiva Reddy | Patna | |
| 76 | 1964 | K. Kamaraj | Bhubaneswar | |
| 77 | 1965 | K. Kamaraj | Durgapur | |
| 78 | 1966–1967 | K. Kamaraj | Jaipur | |
| 79 | 1968 | S. Nijalingappa | Hyderabad | |
| 80 | 1969 | S. Nijalingappa | 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 | [35] [36] |
| 85 | 1983 | Indira Gandhi | Kolkata | [35] [36] |
| 86 | 1985–1991 | Rajiv Gandhi | Mumbai | [38] [39] [40] |
| 87 | 1992 | P. V. Narasimha Rao | Tirupati | |
| 88 | 1993 | P. V. Narasimha Rao | Surajkund | |
| 89 | 1994 | P. V. Narasimha Rao | Delhi | |
| 90 | 1996–1998 | Sitaram Kesri | Kolkata | |
| 91 | 1998–2001 | Sonia Gandhi | New Delhi | [41] [42] |
| 92 | 2001–2004 | Sonia Gandhi | Bengaluru | [41] [42] |
| 93 | 2004–2006 | Sonia Gandhi | New Delhi | [41] [42] |
| 94 | 2006–2010 | Sonia Gandhi | Hyderabad | [41] [42] |
| 95 | 2010–2017 | Sonia Gandhi | New Delhi | [41] [42] |
| 96 | 2017–2019 | Rahul Gandhi | New Delhi | |
| 97 | 2019–2022 | Sonia Gandhi | Jaipur | [41] [42] |
| 98 | 2022–Incumbent | Mallikarjun Kharge | New Delhi | |