The split in the Congress

After 1967, the real challenge to Indira Gandhi came from inside her own party. A group of powerful senior leaders, called the Syndicate, expected her to follow their advice. Its members included K. Kamaraj, S. Nijalingappa, S.K. Patil, Atulya Ghosh and N. Sanjeeva Reddy.

She fought back in two ways:

• She chose her own advisers from outside the party.
• She gave the party a left-leaning agenda: the Ten Point Programme of May 1967, which included social control of banks, nationalisation of general insurance, land reform, and public distribution of food grains.

The 1969 crisis: the office of President fell vacant. The Syndicate nominated N. Sanjeeva Reddy as the official Congress candidate. Indira Gandhi quietly backed V.V. Giri, who stood as an independent. She asked Congress MPs and MLAs to cast a 'conscience vote': to vote as they wished, not as the party said.

At the same time she nationalised fourteen big private banks, and Morarji Desai, who opposed her, left the government. These moves made her popular with the poor and with the left.

Giri won. The Congress then split:

• Congress (O): 'O' for Organisation, the Syndicate's group;
• Congress (R): 'R' for Requisitionists, Indira Gandhi's group.

She presented the split as a fight between socialists (herself) and conservatives (the Syndicate), turning a power struggle into an ideological one.

She also moved against the privy purses, the payments promised to former princely rulers. An ordinance to end them in 1970 was struck down by the Supreme Court; after winning the 1971 election, she abolished them by amending the Constitution.