When Indira Gandhi was expelled from Congress for violating party rules: In Pics

November 12 has a great significance in the history of India as on this date in 1969, Indira Gandhi was expelled by the Congress from the party. During that time, the Syndicate Group used to dominate the Congress party after the death of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The Syndicate within the Congress was a powerful group of leaders who were non-Hindi speaking and these leaders were also behind electing Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi as prime minister for the first time after Nehruji's death. Most of the leaders were from the South. and was led by K Kamaraj, who was no longer the Congress President. Indira Gandhi collided with this syndicate and was re-elected prime minister in the 1967 election but under the pressure of the Syndicate, Indira had to make Morarji Desai the deputy PM and finance minister, but she could not get comfortable. It is to be noted that the same Syndicate had chosen Shastri as the PM over Desai and the second time the Syndicate chose Indira Gandhi, although this time they had to vote between Desai and Indira and the latter won.

Indira no longer wanted the syndicate to interfere in everyday work and started making plans to cast them aside. At that time, even before completing his term, the then president Dr Zakir Hussain died and VV Giri, who was the vice president, was made the acting president. The syndicate wanted Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, the leader among them, to be made the president, while he was already the Lok Sabha Speaker. Indira feared that if Syndicate chose a president of choice, then she could be replaced by Morarji Desai.

So she named Jagjivan Ram in the meeting of the Congress Working Committee but the syndicate chose Reddy as the official candidate for Congress president. Meanwhile, VV Giri had nominated an Independent for the post of President. CJI Hidayullah was made acting president. The syndicate also offered that Giri can be made the Lok Sabha Speaker. Indira played her trick and as a leader of Congress member in Lok Sabha, refused to issue whip to Congress members. A total of 163 Congress MPs voted for VV Giri and 11 out of the 12 Congress-ruled states also got a majority.

Syndicate's decree was that CD Deshmukh, candidate of Jana Sangh and Swatantra Party, should be given second priority vote. Indira won Indira by defeating the candidate of her own party and now she targeted the leaders of the syndicate. The signature campaign started against the then Congress president S Ninjalingappa, where Indira went on tour to different states and started mobilizing Congressmen in her favour.

Indira's supporters demanded a special Congress session so that a new president could be elected; they were convinced that these people did not have public support. But angrily Ninjalingappa wrote an open letter to the PM accusing him of ending the internal democracy of the party, along with two of Indira's close associates Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and C Subramaniyam from the AICC. In return, Indira stopped attending the meetings called by Nijalingappa.

On November 1, the Congress Working Committee met at two places. One in the PM residence and the other in the Congress's Jantar Mantar Road office. In the meeting held in the Congress office, Indira was removed from the primary membership of the party and the parliamentary party was asked to choose its new leader.

Indira had no idea that any leader of the party could go against her to such an extent, although she had a doubt about this. She called the meeting of the Members of Parliament of both the houses at about the same time. Out of a total of 429 Congress MPs, 310 attended Indira's meeting. In this way, the Congress was divided into two parts. Indira's party was named Congress (R-Requisition) and the other party was named Congress (O-Organisation). Though this led to a majority crisis, Indira dropped the no-confidence motion of Congress (O) with the help of CPI and DMK.

In this way, Indira got freedom from many Syndicate leaders Kamaraj, Ninjalingappa, SK Patil and Morarji etc. After this incident, Ninjalingappa retired from active politics and remained involved in social work. He had to pay the price to take the decision to expel Indira so that people forgot that he had given the maximum land for the rehabilitation of the people of Tibet where the four big colonies or towns were erected for Tibetans. That's why in 2011, the Dalai Lama himself came to unveil his statue.