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Indian National Congress Party, India

by André Coutanche

The Indian National Congress party (seen on television) was simply the Indian national flag with the party's symbol instead of the wheel. Their symbol is a right hand, and was seen at: http://www.indiavotes.com/parties/INC.shtml (link now lost). On the flag the hand was drawn in the same size, style, and colour as the wheel would normally be, i.e. dark blue lines, and with white instead of the 'skin' colour.
Kjell Roll Elgsaas, 22 February 1998

The Indian elections have resulted in some useful television coverage from a vexillological point of view. The news programme on BBC4 called "The World" has had extensive reporting from India, including good shots of the flag. I made this one using the national flag image and the hand symbol from the Congress Party's website. I have made the colours on this image darker than on the front page because all the representations I have seen of the flag, on television and on the web, seem to justify this. This then leads to an inconsistency because the national flag is based on the flag of the Congress and they ought to be the same. However, it is safe to say that, in practice, there are significant variations in the colours of real flags and the image above represents a flag which is actually used.
André Coutanche, 20 May 2004

I don't know when it was first used, but I can confirm that the flag of the Congress Party does still have the spinning wheel in the center, as of the late 1990s. I received a small example from a visitor to New Delhi at that time when I believe they were being waved in support of Congress candidate Sonya Gandhi.
Steve Kramer, 2 April 2003

There is no doubt from the television coverage that the hand is the current symbol and is actually used, but the website of the Congress Party does show a small logo which has a flag with the spinning wheel, though the hand is dominant on its site. Perhaps the hand has replaced the earlier spinning wheel, or perhaps the spinning wheel remains the de jure symbol and the hand is used de facto.
André Coutanche, 20 May 2004

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP, with 9 members of the Lok Sabha, a split from Congress, uses a orange-white green flag in the same pattern as the Eritrean national flag, with its electoral symbol, an alarm clock, in the space corresponding to that of the coat of arms in the flag of Eritrea. Images can be seen
here and here.
"Knut A. Berg", 20 October 2004