Indian National Congress

The Indian National Congress (abbreviated INC, and commonly known as the Congress) (Bhāratīya Rāṣṭrīya Kāṅgrēs) is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world.The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian political spectrum. Founded in 1885 by members of the occultist movement Theosophical Society—Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Monomohun Ghose, Mahadev Govind Ranade and William Wedderburn—the Indian National Congress became the leader of the Indian Independence Movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants in its struggle against British rule in India. After independence in 1947, it became the nation's dominant political party, led by the Nehru-Gandhi family for the most part; major challenges for party leadership have only recently formed.

In the 2009 general elections, the Congress emerged as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha, with 205 of its candidates getting elected to the 543-member house. Consequently it, along with a coalition of allies called the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), was able to gain a majority and form the government.