List of important Congress Sessions and their presidents

Year	Place	President	Important Trivia
1885	Bombay	W.C.Banerjee	– 1st Session of Congress – Lord Dufferin was the Viceroy of British India – W.C.Banerjee was the president of the Indian National Congress again in the 1892 session in Allahabad.
1886	Calcutta	Dadabhai Naoroji	– Dadabhai Naoroji is fondly called as the “Grand Old Man of India” – He got a resolution passed in British Parliament for holding preliminary examinations for the I.C.S. in Indiaand England simultaneously – Thrice he was elected to the post of the President of the Indian National Congress, in 1886, 1893 and in 1906 – The Congress’ demand for swaraj (self-rule) was first expressed publicly by him in his presidential address in 1906.
1887	Madras	Badruddin Tyabji	– 1st Muslim president of INC – In 1902, he became the first Indian to hold the post of Chief Justice in Mumbai – He was also active in women’s emancipation and worked to weaken the zenana system
1888	Allahabad	George Yule	– 1st session to be presided by an Englishman – There were more! Sir William Wedderburn presided over at the 1889 session
1890	Calcutta	Pherozeshah Mehta	– Mehta is remembered mainly as founder of the modern Bombay Municipal Corporation which he fostered and served in a distinguished manner for nearly half a century
1896	Kolkata	Rahimtulla M Sayani	The National Song, Vande Mataram was sung for the first time
1907	Surat	Rashbihari Ghosh	The INC split into two, one consisting of Moderates, led by Gokhale and the other consisting of Extremists, led by Tilak
1911	Kolkata	Pandit Bishan Narayan Das	The National Anthem, Jana Gana Mana was sung for the first time
1916	Lucknow	Ambica Charan Mazumdar	– Joint session with Muslim league in which the historic Lucknow pact was signed – Muhammad Ali Jinnah, then a member of the Congress as well as the League, made both the parties reach an agreement to pressure the British government to adopt a more liberal approach to India and give Indians more authority to run their country, besides safeguarding basic Muslim demands – The Lucknow Pact also established cordial relations between the two prominent groups of the Indian National Congress – the “hot faction” led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and the moderates led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale.
1917	Kolkata	Annie Besant	– 1st session to be presided by a Lady
1918	Bombay and Delhi	2 presidents!	– 1st President- Syed Hasan Imam – 2nd President- Madan Mohan Malaviya
1924	Belgaum	Mahatma Gandhi
1925	Kanpur	Sarojini Naidu	– 1st session to be presided by an Indian lady
1929	Lahore	Pt Jawaharlal Nehru	– The decision to launch a civil disobedience movement to achieve complete independence (Poorna Swaraj) and to observe 26 Jan as Independence Day was taken – Nehru became the president for the first time
1938	Haripura	Subhash Chandra Bose	– He was the president twice. Again in 1939
1946	Meerut	Acharya JB Kripalani	– Last pre ­independence session of the INC.