The Indian Youth Congress, youth wing of the Indian Nationwide Congress, was based on 9 August 1960. Through the Emergency, it reworked into an omnipotent outfit infamous for flexing its muscle and intimidating residents, all to ostensibly implement Sanjay Gandhi’s five-point programme. The IYC employees have been usually known as ‘stormtroopers’ in a parallel with Hitler’s shock troops that grew to become instrumental in his rise to energy. Even Indira acknowledged its energy, declaring in 1976 that Youth Congress had “stolen our thunder”.

The outfit has additionally served as a feeder cadre for the mother or father social gathering, having nurtured a number of distinguished Congress leaders, together with Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, N.D. Tiwari, Mamata Banerjee, Manish Tewari, Ambika Soni, Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik, Randeep Surjewala, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and Kamal Nath. However the outfit, which boasts of about “50 million members”, appears to have misplaced its sheen. Analysts attribute it to a plethora of causes starting from Rahul’s ‘management failure’ to the extra all-pervasive bane of political defections.

Greater than 47 years after the hijacking incident, there was one other hijack by Youth Congress employees—that of the India AI Impression Summit 2026. Ten shirtless males holding white T-shirts printed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s picture stormed Corridor 5 at Bharat Mandapam final month to protest in opposition to the India-US interim commerce deal.

Defending the transfer, IYC posted on X, “That’s the reason the fearless employees of the Indian Youth Congress arrived at Bharat Mandapam.. In order that the voice in opposition to the ‘compromised PM’ might be raised and the Modi authorities is compelled to reply for the compromises being made on the nation’s integrity!”

The Youth Congress employees have been arrested and booked beneath stringent provisions associated to selling enmity, hatred, or disharmony between completely different teams based mostly on faith, race, language, or caste, and for furthering imputations and assertions prejudicial to nationwide integration.

Whereas the protest might seem to be a clawback to the Emergency period, specialists argue that the Youth Congress of the present instances is considerably completely different from the Youth Congress of the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties.

“Sanjay’s time was fairly completely different from the time that you just and I dwell in. It was the Congress system which was cracking down (at the moment). In the present day, you may have the BJP which is the hegemon. In order that hegemony has been changed,” stated political analyst Chandrachur Singh.

“Due to this fact, I don’t see the latest protest in the identical spirit because it occurred throughout the Emergency or throughout Sanjay Gandhi’s time. I don’t know the way many individuals would even know who’s the president of the Youth Congress, and what sort of a stature that individual has within the social gathering boards,” he informed ThePrint.

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The height: Sanjay years

Submit-Independence, the youth wing of the Congress social gathering was largely purposeful as a division of the Congress social gathering. Nevertheless, the future of the organisation modified as soon as Indira Gandhi took over because the social gathering president in 1959.

Praveen Rai, political analyst on the Centre for the Research of Creating Societies informed ThePrint that the IYC advanced as a frontal group throughout the prime ministership of Indira Gandhi with concentrate on mass mobilisation of youth and social work.

The organisation received a significant enhance when Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, a distinguished Youth Congress chief, defeated veteran Communist chief and freedom fighter Ganesh Ghosh within the 1971 Indian basic election on the age of 26, recalled veteran journalist Shubhabrata Bhattacharya, who has a Youth Congress background. Dasmunsi was additionally elected as president of the organisation in the identical yr.

By September 1975, nonetheless, Sanjay Gandhi was eyeing the Youth Congress, and his first order of enterprise was the removing of Dasmunsi, who was near Siddhartha Shankar Ray. In accordance with Coomi Kapoor’s ebook, The Emergency: A Private Historical past, “Sanjay was deeply suspicious” of Ray’s “leftist leanings”.

Dasmunsi’s fault, Kapoor notes, was that the Youth Congress was not supporting the twenty-point and five-point programmes “adequately”. Sanjay’s five-point programme was: household planning, tree planting, dowry abolition, eradication of illiteracy and slum clearance.

In Dasmunsi’s place, Ambika Soni, then basic secretary of the organisation, was made president.

Bhattacharya stated that, in December 1975, the Nationwide Council of the Youth Congress then invited Sanjay Gandhi to affix the organisation. Whereas Sanjay by no means held any publish within the Youth Congress, he was a particularly distinguished member, shaping its politics, he added.

Praveen Rai from the Centre for the Research of Creating Societies (CSDS) recalled that the Youth Congress was at its peak throughout the management of Sanjay Gandhi within the Nineteen Seventies with multifarious campaigns for tree plantation, household planning and minimising home violence in opposition to ladies and dowry deaths. “It matched the immense political capital and ideological dominance of the Congress and reached its organisational peak throughout the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties,” he informed ThePrint.

The ‘stormtroopers’

As soon as Sanjay took over the Youth Congress, the primary agenda on his thoughts was rising the numerical energy of the organisation. A meagre seven lakh individuals to guide wouldn’t lower it. Not for him.

In lower than two years, by February 1977, the membership had elevated from seven lakhs to sixty lakhs. The Sanjay Story by journalist Vinod Mehta quotes Soni as admitting that the Youth Congress had been “infiltrated by hoodlums and gangsters…If anyone says no excesses have been dedicated by the so-called Youth Congress members he could be a liar.”

Mehta remembers that Youth Congress employees in Delhi are sometimes remembered for “hounding and subverting virtually your entire industrial life within the metropolis”. He wrote that the members would usually press shopkeepers for “donations”—for causes starting from grownup literacy centres and household planning centres, to easily “donations”.

Within the ebook For Causes of State: Delhi Beneath Emergency, journalists John Dayal and Ajay Bose doc a number of such cases of the ability that Youth Congress leaders in addition to employees wielded on the bottom. For example, they recall an incident when a reporter was arrested beneath the dreaded Upkeep of Inner Safety Act (MISA) after an altercation with Ambika Soni. The reporter had picked up a pamphlet being distributed by protesters elevating slogans in opposition to the Emergency and refused at hand it over to Soni when she requested for it. “You higher give it, or you may be in hassle,” Soni stated, as per the ebook.

The organisation was additionally very lively within the sterlisation programme, organising household planning melas. They have been fairly lively in different elements of the nation too. For example, the Shah Fee report notes that the Youth Congress in Andhra Pradesh sought to be actively related to the sterlisation marketing campaign. In accordance with the report, the state’s director of Medical and Well being Providers had requested Youth Congress leaders to organise mass vasectomy camps of 500 to 1,000 sterilisation circumstances in every panchayat samiti and had supplied authorities help for organising such camps.

The then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh additionally wrote to district collectors in August 1976 asking them to take full benefit of the cooperation of the Youth Congress in “creating the correct ambiance for persuading” eligible {couples} for the operations, the report says.

‘Security valve’ in opposition to dissent

The attraction of the organisation lay in its capability to behave as a “security valve” in opposition to rising widespread dissent. Chandrachur Singh asserted that throughout the darkish days of the Emergency, Indira Gandhi was beneath the “affect of leaders who have been younger and maybe gave her the impression that they management the heartbeat of the individuals”.

“My understanding is that the Youth Congress, in these days, was a security valve. And the security valve was created with a purpose to one way or the other channelise or create an area which might permit the youthful individuals to vent off their disillusionment with the way in which developmental politics in India had been going,” he stated. He harked again to the time when there was an understanding of relative deprivation within the nation, with individuals hoping that when India will get independence, every little thing goes to fall so as, and there might be growth.

Through the Emergency, Singh recalled that it was the youthful individuals who have been mobilising all people. He referred to the Navnirman Andolan for example, when college students and middle-class individuals in Gujarat mobilised in opposition to the financial disaster and corruption.

The Youth Congress, in keeping with Singh, was taking part in that position in creating a security valve, bringing individuals who have been sad with the federal government into their fold, “to diffuse the disenchantment that had are available in”.

“I don’t assume it succeeded in doing so, however Mrs Gandhi was helpless. She was fully beneath the grip and management of some leaders who declare themselves to be within the title of the youth. They thought that they’d management the social gathering,” he asserted.

After the Emergency, Sanjay demanded 200 seats for the Youth Congress to rejuvenate the social gathering within the 1977 basic elections. He, nonetheless, ended up with lower than 10 nominations— considered one of which went to Sanjay himself who suffered a significant defeat in his 1977 debut.

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Youth Congress as ‘management manufacturing facility’

A number of Youth Congress leaders have endured the check of time to emerge as main political figures within the nation. Creator and political analyst Rasheed Kidwai credited Sanjay Gandhi for rising as a “management manufacturing facility”.

“There are lots of people who got here and joined palms with Sanjay. They have been younger, and have been pan Indian. They served as a spine of the Congress, not solely within the Nineteen Seventies however in Eighties and 90s and until the UPA period,” he informed ThePrint.

“For me, this was a really illustrious time for the Indian Youth Congress. After that, they (Youth Congress) survived, but it surely has not produced the form of leaders who would make an affect on the social gathering, the federal government and nation and politics,” Kidwai added.

Chandrachur Singh blamed the Congress being out of energy for a really very long time for “vibrant younger individuals with potential not becoming a member of the social gathering”. He identified that such organisations produce leaders when the mother or father organisation is in energy.

“That’s the lure which attracts youthful individuals in the direction of becoming a member of the group, as a result of they know that they are going to have a future. Youthful individuals with prospects, or with potential, will attempt to decide on a celebration or a discussion board which they assume will serve their functions within the close to future, in addition to in the long term,” he defined.

Nevertheless, senior Congress chief Randeep Surjewala, who served as president of the Indian Youth Congress from March 2000 to February 2005, stated the Youth Congress has at all times been an organisation that builds tomorrow’s leaders in the present day.

“That paradigm has not modified. It’s the feeder cadre to the principal social gathering, which trains the leaders into organisational acumen, floor stage politics and issue-based agitations as a mode of transformation,” he informed ThePrint.

Passing the baton

The Youth Congress weakened and its ranks dwindled as soon as Congress misplaced energy in 1977. Chandrachur Singh asserted that over a time period, significantly after Indira Gandhi got here again to energy, there was a really robust centralising tendency within the Congress.

“Which means that the Congress as a celebration is the one discussion board and all different platforms and organisations inside Congress are simply our bodies or organisations, that are there. They exist in title. I don’t assume they even have energy or organisation on the bottom,” he stated, including that he doesn’t see the Youth Congress having any organisational presence in areas the place the Congress just isn’t in energy.

After Sanjay Gandhi’s dying, Rajiv Gandhi introduced in a band of non-Youth Congress youth leaders, like Amitabh Bachchan and Arun Nehru. “However all his individuals deserted him, whereas Indira Gandhi’s individuals endured,” Bhattacharya stated, referring to leaders together with Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ambika Soni and Kamal Nath.

Nevertheless, Bhattacharya stated {that a} comparability between the Youth Congress of the time with in the present day’s Youth Congress is “unfair as a result of your entire political discourse of these days was at a a lot greater aircraft than what it’s in the present day”.

Rahul Gandhi’s entry into Indian politics was characterised by his makes an attempt at a cultural transformation in his social gathering. And considered one of his initiatives was the Youth Congress.

One of many first modifications Rahul launched within the Youth Congress was to introduce organisational polls to elect IYC office-bearers. He engaged the Basis for Superior Administration of Elections (FAME), led by former election commissioners J.M. Lyngdoh and Okay.J. Rao, to conduct these polls.

He changed a nomination-driven choice with elections at varied ranges. Rahul, together with different Congress leaders like Sachin Pilot and Sandeep Dikshit, additionally interviewed candidates for management positions. Amongst different issues, they have been judged on the idea of their responses to “thought-provoking questions” on nationwide points.

The IYC web site boasts that with Gandhi’s reforms in 2007-08, membership of the organisation surged from 200,000 to over 2.5 million.

A household affair

Regardless of purported makes an attempt at democratisation of the Youth Congress, chinks started exhibiting early on, with a number of the elections usually reworking right into a household affair.

Studies from the time present that in 2011, the primary Youth Congress elections had heirs of political households as frontrunners. This included the sons of forest minister Maharashtra Patangrao Kadam, nephew of the state’s income minister Balasaheb Thorat, and son of the state’s employment assure minister Nitin Raut.

A number of of the primary elections within the state models additionally noticed youngsters, kin or proteges of political leaders taking on posts. For example, then Haryana Finance Minister Ajay Singh Yadav’s son Chiranjeev Rao was elected because the state Youth Congress head. In Tamil Nadu, M. Yuvaraj, stated to be a protégé of former Union Minister G.Okay. Vasan, was elected as president of the state Youth Congress unit.

In 2013, the Himachal Pradesh Youth Congress had Vikramaditya Singh, son of then chief minister Virbhadra Singh, as its chief. In 2018 in Maharashtra, Satyajeet Tambe, the son of legislator Sudhir Tambe and nephew of former state income minister Balasaheb Thorat, was elected because the state Youth Congress president.

The considerations continued through the years, with a number of senior social gathering leaders demanding scrapping of the Youth Congress elections, alleging that they’re “costly, corrupt and solely harm the social gathering”.

For Kidwai, Sanjay Gandhi’s Youth Congress is eons other than Rahul Gandhi’s Youth Congress. “Rahul Gandhi’s Youth Congress is an assortment of members of the civil society—people who find themselves properly learn and educated and have a liberal worldview, and they’re from varied trendy and world universities. They’re extremely educated, and have joined Rahul for a trigger. However they don’t have that form of political coaching, or political organisational abilities.”

In accordance with Kidwai, Rahul has “hopelessly failed” in his reinvention of the Youth Congress.

“Rahul, many instances, would ask contenders, ‘what’s your view about North Korea’s nuclear plant’, or ‘what’s your view about post-Saddam Hussein Iraq’, so he might gauge the mental prowess of the individuals,” Kidwai stated.

He contrasted this method with Sanjay Gandhi’s method. “Sanjay gave a variety of energy, uninterrupted energy, to his individuals. He stated, if individuals don’t work, simply slap them…Sanjay additionally gave a variety of empowerment throughout the organisation. So when the Congress misplaced that 1977 election, and naturally, in 1980 when it received—each instances, he gave a variety of impetus to the Youth Congress individuals getting tickets,” Kidwai recalled.

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‘Traitor’ chapter of Youth Congress

Early this February, a video of Rahul Gandhi protesting together with MPs close to the Makar Dwar of the Parliament went viral. Gandhi was seen referring to Union Minister Ravneet Singh Bittu as a ‘traitor’, resulting in a disagreement between the 2.

Bittu had joined the BJP in 2024, after resigning from the Congress, forsaking a household legacy. And it was a gathering with Gandhi in 2007 that had received Bittu into politics.

“Rahul Gandhi had then develop into basic secretary of the Indian Youth Congress and I had gone to congratulate him. He informed me to not let my grandfather’s legacy and sacrifice go to waste,” Bittu was quoted as saying in an interview. Bittu’s grandfather was Beant Singh, the Punjab chief minister assassinated by Sikh militants in August 1995.

After his spat with Gandhi in February, Bittu blamed the social gathering changing into a “household affair” for individuals leaving the Congress. “If it had remained the actual Congress, individuals would have stayed,” he informed the media.

Bittu isn’t an remoted instance. A number of Youth Congress leaders from this time have since discovered refuge in different events.

Jitin Prasada, who was as soon as thought of a detailed aide of Rahul Gandhi, started his political profession in 2001 as a basic secretary of the Youth Congress. Whereas he was a Union minister within the earlier Congress-led authorities, successful Lok Sabha elections in 2004 and 2009, he grew to become part of the 23 senior Congress leaders who wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020, calling for main inside reforms within the social gathering. A yr later, in 2021, he joined the BJP.

Priyanka Chaturvedi, now a distinguished Shiv Sena (UBT) chief, additionally started her political journey with the Youth Congress in 2010, and rapidly rose by way of ranks to develop into the overall secretary for North-West Mumbai in 2012. Nevertheless, she left the Congress in 2019 citing reinstatement of leaders who had allegedly misbehaved together with her.

Ashok Tanwar, a former nationwide president of the Youth Congress from 2005 to 2010, went by way of his personal journey of quitting the Congress and rejoining it. He give up the social gathering in 2019, joined the Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Occasion and the BJP briefly over the subsequent 5 years, earlier than rejoning the Congress in 2024.

‘Chalk and cheese’

It was ‘blind loyalty’ amongst Youth Congress leaders that stood out within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties. “The loyalty then was not transactional,” Kidwai stated.

Does that loyalty mirror within the Youth Congress leaders of in the present day? Kidwai asserted that Sanjay’s management and Rahul’s management is “chalk and cheese”.

“Sanjay was capable of spot expertise…Many individuals from that period, they really gave again lots to the social gathering by way of their administrative talent or organisational talent…As for Rahul, a lot of his pals and contemporaries have left (the social gathering). The utmost individuals who have left have been near Rahul,” he says.

For example, TMC chief Mahua Moitra famously left her excessive paying job at JP Morgan Chase in New York after being impressed by Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Aam Admi Ka Sipahi’ initiative. She joined the Youth Congress in 2009, solely to change allegiance to TMC days earlier than the 2010 Kolkata Municipal Company elections.

“I bear in mind Mahua Moitra being Rahul Gandhi’s discover, and he or she is an asset for TMC now,” Kidwai says, pointing to an issue of retention within the organisation.

Highlighting the distinction between Sanjay’s Youth Congress and Rahul’s Youth Congress, Rai from CSDS informed ThePrint, “The IYC beneath Sanjay Gandhi pro-actively interacted with residents and highlighted their considerations and seeked assist. Regardless of Rahul Gandhi’s particular concentrate on reviving its utility, there appears to be a large hole between digital and precise footprints, primarily on account of lack of ethical boosting synergies with Congress management and failure to align with the aspirations of era Z.”

The position of agitation

And who shapes the ideology of the Youth Congress? Surjewala asserted that the IYC is formed by its president in some ways.

“It’s a must to give the IYC president the operational efficacy, and freedom to ideate and evolve. I at all times inform successive Youth Congress presidents that contemplating democracy per se is beneath assault, establishments are dropping by the wayside, and the Structure’s important ethos and edifice is being crumbled by an autocratic regime, the position of agitation turns into much more central to the core of the Youth Congress,” he informed ThePrint.

Taking his personal instance, Surejwala stated that in his time, the organisation had “close to full autonomy of functioning”.

“The final two presidents, B.V. Srinivas and the present one Uday Bhanu Chib, I’ve been actively in contact with them, and I’ve by no means discovered them hindered by the principal social gathering in any method,” he informed ThePrint.

At present, the Youth Congress is headed by Uday Bhanu Chib, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir. Bhattacharya stated he believes Chib attracts inspiration from former Jammu and Kashmir Youth Congress president and former vp of Youth Congress, Bhim Singh, who went on to discovered his personal Jammu and Kashmir Nationwide Panthers Occasion.

Surjewala asserts that in every decade and a half, pure modifications have occurred relying on the political circumstances. “For instance, I used to be the Youth Congress nationwide president between 2000 and 2005. So Youth Congress is at all times the simplest once we are out of energy. In fact, Mr Sanjay Gandhi after which Rajiv ji as soon as used the company of Youth Congress for social reconstruction. So it performs completely different roles at completely different instances, beneath completely different circumstances, for the Congress social gathering,” he says.

Surjewala identified that in Covid-19, the Youth Congress was “on the forefront of Covid help to residents”. He asserted that the Youth Congress has performed an essential academic position, in addition to the organisational position of constructing new younger leaders.

“Youth Congress has been doing one of the best throughout the means to focus on points, and the newest occasion the place Mr Uday Bhanu Chib has been unjustifiably and illegally arrested, together with different leaders of the Youth Congress, displays as to how democracy is beneath assault by these on the helm of energy. When dissent dies, democracy and constitutional norms additionally begin dying,” he stated.

College of Life

So what went flawed with Sanjay’s ‘stormtroopers’? In accordance with Chandrachur Singh, the issue lies in a “disconnect with the grassroots”.

“When any person says that Congress ought to return to the grassroots, what does that imply? It primarily signifies that it ought to resurrect all these organizations,” he asserted. Strengthening the Congress, Singh stated, means strengthening organisations just like the Youth Congress, significantly within the states the place the Congress is in energy.

As for the ray of hope that Rahul’s makes an attempt might have supplied, Singh asserted that the American system of recruitment, with primaries and the secondaries, “doesn’t work right here”.

Kidwai additionally known as it a “management failure on the a part of Rahul, not a lot of the individuals who he’s hiring or people who find themselves leaving him”.

“Sanjay would assume and dream about politics. He was very hands-on. I feel Rahul lacks that avenue smartness, and due to this fact, individuals round him are additionally not avenue sensible…Individuals round Sanjay have been all top notch graduates from the College of life. Rahul has not produced a single graduate from the College of Life,” he informed ThePrint.

Rai from CSDS acknowledged that whereas IYC served as a stepping stone into the management pantheon of Congress, it “doesn’t work so effectively now”.

Nevertheless, he blamed it as a phenomena throughout events. “The transition from youth platforms and cadres to key management posts in most events have taken a success on account of rampancy of political defections and lure of workplace, and IYC is not any exception to this rampant phenomenon,” he stated.

He asserted that the electoral decline of Congress lately had an “electoral disconnect and demoralising affect” on IYC, asserting that the organisation must “reconnect with the general public and marketing campaign for his or her urgent points to revive their political relevance and enhance the electoral fortunes of the Congress”.

“The revival plans of the Congress appeared to have a galvanising impact, however electoral success is the one panacea that may assist them in regaining its misplaced glory,” Rai stated.

(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)

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