Sonia Gandhi is the longest-serving president of the Congress party, which has governed India during most of its post-Independence decades. She was born in Italy, and educated at Cambridge University, where she met Rajiv Gandhi, who was then the son of prime minister Indira Gandhi. The two married in 1968.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, during campaigning for that year’s general elections, Sonia Gandhi initially stayed away from politics, but in 1998, she was chosen as the president of the Congress party. Under her leadership, in 2004, a Congress-led coalition came to power at the Centre. She famously declined to be prime minister — her foreign birth had become a politically controversial issue — and instead chose the economist Manmohan Singh. She was then named the chairperson of the coalition, which was called the United Progressive Alliance or the UPA.
Sonia Gandhi won her first Lok Sabha election in 1999, representing Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, a family stronghold. From 2004, she has represented Rae Bareli as an MP in the Lok Sabha. In 2024, she announced she was contesting elections from the Rajya Sabha, the indirectly elected house of Parliament, signalling her stepping back from electoral politics.
Rahul may be a well intentioned man like his father but his approach has been one of mindless criticism of Modi without logic. His campaign agenda is writ if coterie around him and as long as he is unable to rid himself of these so-called advisors and stop ludicrous comments like Gabbar Singh Tax, he has no scope or hope of improving congress tally
Destruction is necessary for creation. I hope the current structure of Congress is completely destroyed along with the dynasty & other mini dynasties within it, as long that will lead to a new Congress which can counter BJP. In addition, Congress needs to stop resisting development aspirations of India, instead provide an alternative development agenda to the one of BJP. However, right now all they practice is dynasty worship, caste appeals, grievance based socialist policies and minority appeasement. That needs to stop right away.
Insightful. If Rahul can bring Congress to the centre on the left-right spectrum and articulate realistic, achievable policies prior to 2019 elections, 144 may not be a difficult target to achieve. The vast majority of middle-class Hindu voters may look beyond religion and family if he does that. However, he hasn’t shown any signs of that in his Gujarat election campaign. On the contrary, by pandering to Patel reservation, he has only displayed expediency, and therefore may have dimmed his chances.