New Delhi, Jan. 22: As a building that witnessed Jawaharlal Nehru slog and changed hands when the Congress split and again when it lost its first election, 7 Jantar Mantar Road belongs to history.

Apart from that, it seems, it doesn't belong to anyone else.

Signboards over the gates of the former Congress headquarters refer to the Janata Dal United, the Akhil Bharatiya Sewa Dal, a trust formed by Morarji Desai and an "Anees Canteen" for good measure.

But even the Centre appears clueless who has the rights to the Lutyens Delhi mansion, as reflected in its response to a Right to Information query from activist Subhash Agrawal.

"As per the records of lease-1 section of land and development office, there is no information as to which political parties the property at 7 Jantar Mantar Road, New Delhi, was allotted," said the reply from P.T. Jameskutty, central public information officer with the Union urban development ministry.

"However, a copy of a letter dated April 16, 1958, from the office of (the) settlement commissioner, where it has been stated that the requisition portion of the premises are in occupation of AICC (All India Congress Committee)."

Soon after Independence, the Congress had moved its headquarters from Anand Bhavan, Allahabad, to 7 Jantar Mantar Road in New Delhi.

Then Prime Minister and Congress president Jawaharlal Nehru would spend a lot of his time there, attending to party work, screening membership forms and writing to the party's state and district chiefs.

The building witnessed Indira Gandhi's surprise appointment as Congress president in 1959 at Nehru's behest. Indira then turned the party from a tenant to a formal leaseholder.

But sometime in 1971, two years after the party split, the so-called Congress (Organisation), which was opposed to Indira, took possession of the building on account of being the parent party.

The Morarji Desai-led Congress (O) merged with the Janata Party on the eve of the 1977 general election. As Prime Minister, Desai formed the Sardar Patel Smarak Sansthan - a trust - so it could take the building over.

Jameskutty's reply, however, suggests the transfer was never completed although the Janata Party seems to have taken possession.

"It has also been stated in the note that Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Smarak Trust has claimed that on April 30, 1977, Ashok Mehta, president, Indian National Congress (INC), and four others executed a deed in favour of the trust transferring all its rights," the RTI reply said, referring to the Congress (O) as the official Congress as opposed to the Congress (Indira).

"But the trust was informed that it would not be possible to execute the deed in favour of the trust as it had not entered into transaction with them."

By the year 2000, S. Nijalingappa, the last of the original trustees, had died. A few years later, the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress tried to regain control of the building, arguing the trust had become defunct.

Then party general secretary Oscar Fernandes wrote to Congress chief minister Sheila Dikshit asking that the Registrar of Trusts, which comes under the state government, revive the Sansthan by appointing Congress officials as trustees.

But a political faux pas botched it up. The Dikshit government tried to get 7 Jantar Mantar Road registered directly in the name of the Congress and sought a no-objection certificate from the then NDA government at the Centre.

At the time, the Union urban development ministry was headed by Jagmohan, a former Sanjay Gandhi confidant who had joined the BJP after traversing a wide spectrum of ideologies. He denied the Congress request.

Fernandes repeatedly visited Jagmohan in his Nirman Bhavan office but the minister kept referring him to L.K. Advani in North Block or Ram Jethmalani and Arun Jaitley, who successively helmed the Union law ministry. Eventually, Fernandes conceded defeat.

Numerous authorised and unauthorised tenants and sub-tenants continue to occupy the building, sources said. Among them is the Janata Dal United, a breakaway Janata group that had joined the NDA.

The file notings given to Agrawal show that the department of legal affairs had given an opinion in August 1993 saying the ownership rested with the central government. It noted that the INC/AICC no longer existed in its original organisational form after repeated splits.

After the 1977 defeat, 24 Akbar Road became the Congress party office. When Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, she refused to stake claim to 7 Jantar Mantar Road.

"I have built the party from scratch, not once but twice. The new office premises will rejuvenate the party rank and file for decades," she told Sanjay when he broached the subject of returning to 7 Jantar Mantar.

The then Congress (O) office secretary, Saddiq Ali, declined to hand over any official papers or books to Indira. So the party has no documents, minutes or correspondence from the years between 1947 and 1971.