Sonia Gandhi

At 77 years old, Sonia Gandhi has this physical status:

Sonia Gandhi's involvement with Indian public life began after the assassination of her mother-in-law and her husband's election as prime minister. As the prime minister's wife she acted as his official hostess and also accompanied him on a number of state visits.

In 1984, she actively campaigned against her husband's sister-in-law Maneka Gandhi who was running against Rajiv in Amethi. At the end of Rajiv Gandhi's five years in office, the Bofors scandal broke out. Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman believed to be involved, was said to be a friend of Sonia Gandhi, having access to the Prime Minister's official residence. The BJP has alleged that she appeared on the voters' list in New Delhi prior to obtaining Indian citizenship in April 1983, in contravention of Indian law.

Former senior Congress leader and former President of India Pranab Mukherjee said that she surrendered her Italian passport to the Italian Embassy on 27 April 1983. Italian nationality law did not permit dual nationality until 1992. So, by acquiring Indian citizenship in 1983, she would automatically have lost Italian citizenship.

After Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 and Sonia Gandhi refused to succeed him as the Congress president and prime minister, the party settled on the choice of P. V. Narasimha Rao who subsequently became Prime Minister after winning elections that year. Over the next few years, however, the Congress fortunes continued to dwindle and it lost the 1996 elections. Several senior leaders such as Madhavrao Sindhia, Rajesh Pilot, Narayan Dutt Tiwari, Arjun Singh, Mamata Banerjee, G. K. Moopanar, P. Chidambaram and Jayanthi Natarajan were in open revolt against incumbent President Sitaram Kesri and many of whom quit the party, splitting the Congress into many factions.

In an effort to revive the party's sagging fortunes, she joined the Congress Party as a primary member in the Calcutta Plenary Session in 1997 and became party leader in 1998.

In May 1999, three senior leaders of the party (Sharad Pawar, P. A. Sangma, and Tariq Anwar) challenged her right to try to become India's Prime Minister because of her foreign origins. In response, she offered to resign as party leader, resulting in an outpouring of support and the expulsion from the party of the three rebels who went on to form the Nationalist Congress Party.

Within 62 days of joining as a primary member, she was offered the party President post which she accepted.

She contested Lok Sabha elections from Bellary, Karnataka and Amethi, Uttar Pradesh in 1999. She won both seats but chose to represent Amethi. In Bellary, she had defeated veteran BJP leader, Sushma Swaraj.

She was elected the Leader of the Opposition of the 13th Lok Sabha in 1999.

When the BJP-led NDA formed a government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, she took the office of the Leader of Opposition. In 2000,She defeated Jitendra Prasada by a huge margin of 97% in Congress President Election. She had been repeatedly selected for the position without any election being held. As Leader of Opposition, she called a no-confidence motion against the NDA government led by Vajpayee in 2003.

In the 2004 general elections, Gandhi launched a nationwide campaign, crisscrossing the country on the Aam Aadmi (ordinary man) slogan in contrast to the 'India Shining' slogan of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) alliance. She countered the BJP asking "Who is India Shining for?". In the election, she was re-elected by a 200,000-vote margin over nearest rival, in the Rae Bareli. Following the unexpected defeat of the NDA, she was widely expected to be the next Prime Minister of India. On 16 May, she was unanimously chosen to lead a 15-party coalition government with the support of the left, which was subsequently named the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

The defeated NDA protested once again her 'foreign origin' and senior NDA leader Sushma Swaraj threatened to shave her head and "sleep on the ground", among other things, should Sonia become prime minister.

The NDA claimed that there were legal reasons that barred her from the Prime Minister's post.

They pointed, in particular, to Section 5 of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1955, which they claimed implied 'reciprocity'. This was contested by others and eventually the suits were dismissed by the Supreme Court of India.

A few days after the election, Gandhi recommended Manmohan Singh as her choice as prime minister, that the party leaders accepted. Her supporters compared it to the old Indian tradition of renunciation, while her opponents attacked it as a political stunt.

On 23 March 2006, Gandhi announced her resignation from the Lok Sabha and also as chairperson of the National Advisory Council under the office-of-profit controversy and the speculation that the government was planning to bring an ordinance to exempt the post of chairperson of National Advisory Council from the purview of office of profit. She was re-elected from her constituency Rae Bareli in May 2006 by a margin of over 400,000 votes.

As chairperson of the National Advisory Committee and the UPA, she played an important role in making the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Right to Information Act into law.

She addressed the United Nations on 2 October 2007, Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary which is observed as the international day of non-violence after a UN resolution passed on 15 July 2007.

Under her leadership, the Congress-led UPA won a decisive majority in the 2009 general elections with Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister. The Congress itself won 206 Lok Sabha seats, which was then the highest total by any party since 1991. She was re-elected to a third term as a member of parliament representing Rae Bareli.

In 2013, Gandhi became the first person to serve as Congress President for 15 years consecutively. In the same year, Gandhi condemned the Supreme Court judgement supporting Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and backed LGBT rights.

In the 2014 general election, she held her seat in Rae Bareli. However, the Indian National Congress and the Congress-led UPA electoral alliance suffered their worst result in a general election ever, winning only 44 and 59 seats respectively.

When Rahul Gandhi was expected to take over as Congress president, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury picked Sonia over Rahul, calling her the "glue that binds the opposition" during an interview November 2017 . Rahul took over as the 49th Congress president on 16 December 2017.

Gandhi returned to active politics for Indian National Congress' campaign for the 2018 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election. Having stayed away from campaigning for elections since 2016, Gandhi addressed a rally at Bijapur, which comprised five legislative assembly constituencies; while Congress emerged as the second largest party in the election with 78 seats behind the BJP, the former won four or the five assembly seats from Bijapur. Gandhi also played an active role in orchestrating a post-poll alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular).

Rahul Gandhi, taking responsibility of Congress party's second consecutive loss in general elections held in 2019, resigned from the post of President on May, 25. Following the resignation, party leaders began deliberations for a suitable candidate to replace him. The Congress Working Committee met on August, 10 to take a final call on the matter and passed a resolution asking Sonia Gandhi to take over as interim president until a consensus candidate could be picked.

Following her appointment, Gandhi undertook restructuring of the Congress' state units and appointed Kumari Selja and Eknath Gaikwad as the presidents of the party's Haryana and Mumbai units. Several other changes were also made in the party's organisational units in states slated for elections including Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand.

In February 2020, Gandhi held a press conference where she demanded that Home Minister Amit Shah should resign for failing to stop the North East Delhi riots. She asked for the deployment of an adequate number of security forces. In 2022, it was reported that Sonia Gandhi supports Ashok Gehlot leading Congress as Congress president in the next Indian general election.But, Gehlot not content on that election and Mallikarjun Kharge elected as a new Congress president.

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