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.
The world will remember him as the only highly educated Sikh who was spineless and who became a mute spectator when the mother India was looted left n right
Excellent analysis by the politically wisest. The man of extraordinary caliber is candidly recounted here as father of reforms. The himalayan recognition makes the narration attractive.
A leader at top irrespective of his Party always worked in the interest of Nation as an Executive Head of Govt.
I miss that grace and thin smile and those bespectacled eyes, dim, full of learning. We have now a loud speaker ,talking too much,who only knows how to make people clap at his comments full of third grade wisdom.
You also have to admit that he led one of the most corrupt regime post independence.
A gracious tribute. For reasons that remain unclear, Dr Singh did not pursue economic reforms as PM, perhaps content with the surge of high growth in the exuberant years leading up to 2008. As for granting autonomy to the FM, perhaps greater control ought to have been exercised at a time when India was grappling with the global financial crisis. A bout of double digit inflation, high fiscal deficits, large loans that turned sour, the seeds of some of the problems we continue to face were sown during that time.
How can history be kind to Maunmohan chingh.
This man has through his puppet stance given us MODI!!!!!!!