Nehru’s post-independence political supremacy was secured only by Patel’s death

Evidence

But where did Bandung fit into Nehru’s tenure as first Prime Minister of independent India? His later power has obscured the fact that Nehru had come to occupy that office from a position of great weakness, and only because Gandhi had chosen him. The Congress Party was much more firmly in Patel’s control, a fact which Patel later demonstrated by getting Parshotam Das Tandon elected as party president despite Nehru’s public opposition; Nehru was to describe that election as a ‘slap in my face’. Under the circumstances, Gandhi’s assassination in January 1948 was a very personal blow to him, and it was only Patel’s own death in December 1950 which secured his unchallenged supremacy within Congress. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 571