BJP expanding its real estate footprint across India, Congress struggling

In July 2014, Amit Shah shared his twin objectives with his lieutenants after taking over as the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). One, the BJP should become the largest party in the world in terms of the number of its members, and two, it should own and build a headquarters for itself equipped with modern amenities in every state capital and offices in each of the country's districts.

Over the last nine years -- under Shah until mid-2019 and subsequently led by his successor, Jagat Prakash Nadda -- the BJP has pursued the two agendas tenaciously. Earlier this month, on June 9, Nadda laid the foundation for a new BJP office for its Delhi state unit, stating it was the 167th BJP office under construction across the country. The BJP's Delhi state unit functions out of an MP bungalow in Lutyens' Delhi, while several offices are in rented accommodations or government premises.

Nadda said the BJP decided to construct 887 offices and now has more than 500 offices it owns countrywide. A couple of days later, inaugurating two party offices in Himachal Pradesh, Nadda said that apart from the 167 under construction, the party is buying land for 122 more offices.

The BJP's frenetic acquisition of real estate has coincided with its electoral expansion beyond its traditional catchment areas of northern and central India. It has been unmatched by any other political party in recent years.

In post-independent India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) saw a similarly obsessive attempt at increasing the party's real estate after it split from the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1964. Its first general secretary, P Sundarayya, who headed the party from 1964 to 1976, is celebrated as the "builder of the party", including for understanding the need for constructing party offices across the country.

When other 'national parties' operated out of bungalows allotted to one or the other of their MPs in New Delhi, the Communist Party of India and CPI (M) were the first to move their main party offices to buildings they owned. The CPI built Ajoy Bhavan in central Delhi in 1969, while the CPI (M) moved its central committee office to AKG Bhavan in Gole Market in 1991. The decision, in hindsight, has served the two well as their respective electoral strengths plummeted since 2014, and they have fewer MP bungalows.

But the 137-year-old Congress, considered the biggest 'landlord' and owns vast real estate, has struggled over the last decade in protecting the buildings, leasehold, and freehold land it owns. It has found, especially in states where it is in decline, the real estate has been usurped through illegal land grabs or when the state unit defaulted in paying taxes.

In Bihar, for example, the local Congress unit dedicated one month in 2012 to 'protect its real estate' to trace its properties across the state and lodge police cases against squatters. In 2015, the then Congress treasurer Motilal Vora asked state units to document the real estate the party owned.

But it took another massive Lok Sabha defeat in 2019 for it to start moving on the project. The Congress is now looking at its real estate as a way to monetise and fund the activities of its state units. Party sources said they were still in the process of documenting the land that the party owns. In the Congress' case, precious real estate, such as Jawahar Bhawan, a stone's throw away from Parliament, was built with donations from Pradesh Congress Committees to house the Congress headquarters, but it is now home to Gandhi family-headed non-governmental organisations. The Congress national office has been housed at 24 Akbar Road, a government bungalow, since 1978. It could shift to its own building in the coming months not far from the BJP's national headquarters at Deendayal Upadhyay Marg. The BJP completed the process in 2018 when it shifted out of New Delhi's 11 Ashoka Road to Deendayal Upadhyaya Marg.

According to the audited accounts that national parties filed with the Election Commission for 2021-22, the Congress' ownership of buildings, freehold, and leasehold land remained constant, while the BJP's ownership of building and land witnessed an increase, which has been the trend in recent years. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) analysed the total assets declared by seven national parties to the Election Commission in 2019-20, of which BJP's comprised 70 per cent.