9 December, 1946
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! Died
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! Office
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| Rae Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh
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| –
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| Congress (I)
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! Spouse
| Rajiv Gandhi
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! Children
| Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi
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As of July 4, 2006
Source: [link]
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Sonia Gandhi (Hindi: , pronunciation: / soːnɪjaː gaːndʰiː /) (born December 9, 1946), is an Italian-born Indian politician, the President of the Indian National Congress and the widow of former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi. She was the Chairperson of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in the Lok Sabha, until she resigned on the 23rd of March 2006. She was named the third most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine in the year 2004. [link]. However, that ranking has fallen sharply, by 2005, that Forbes no longer ranked her in the top 100 most powerful women. She was returned to Parliament by a margin of over 400,000 votes in the recently held by-election for Rae Bareilly.
Born to Stefano and Paola Maino, as Edvige Antonia Albina Maino, in Lusiana, a little village 50 km from Vicenza, Italy, she spent her adolescence in Orbassano, a town near Turin being raised in a conservative Roman Catholic family and attending a Catholic school. Her father, a building contractor and former Fascist suporter, died in 1983. [link]. Her mother and two sisters still live around Orbassano.
Following her husband's assassination on May 21, 1991, there were calls for her to enter politics by members of the Congress Party. After her refusal, the party settled on the choice of P V Narasimha Rao as leader and, subsequently, Prime Minister. She finally entered politics just before the 1998 national election. She officially took charge of the Congress party as its president in 1998 and was elected to parliament in the elections held in 1999. She was elected the Leader of the Opposition of the 13th Lok Sabha in 1999.
During her campaign, her opponents (mainly the Bharatiya Janata Party) played up her foreign birth, her failure to take Indian citizenship for 15 years after her wedding, and her lack of fluency in Hindi or any Indian language despite her claim that she had "become an Indian in her heart the day she became Indira Gandhi's daughter-in-law". In May 1999, Sonia Gandhi offered to resign from the Congress Party leadership after three senior leaders (Sharad Pawar, Purno A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar) challenged her right to try to become India's Prime Minister, given that she was not born of Indian blood or soil.
Parliament was, however, badly fractured, and despite being the largest grouping of parties in India's parliament, the 15-party UPA was not able to secure a majority and had to depend on outside support from the Left Parties to form a government. After a storm of controversy over her foreign origin, Gandhi declined the prime minister post. Her supporters hailed this as an act of renunciation while her opponents attacked it as a political move in which the ultimate aim was to gain an absolute majority for the Congress Party in Parliament, subsequent to which she would become Prime Minister.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
At the time, several members of the National Democratic Alliance - notably Subramaniam Swamy and Sushma Swaraj - claimed that there were legal reasons that barred her from the Prime Minister's post, and, indeed, from Parliament.[link]. They pointed, in particular, to Section 5 of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1955, which they claimed implied 'reciprocity'. This was contested by others[link] and eventually the suits were dismissed by the Supreme Court of India.[link]
The Supreme Court of India also dismissed an attempt to prosecute her for falsely claiming to have graduated from Cambridge University during the election [link].
On May 18, a day before her scheduled inauguration, in a politically shrewd move (as her critics say) or reasonable one (per her supporters) to avoid the pain of another costly agitation and division of the nation based on ideology, she suggested economist Dr. Manmohan Singh for the Prime Minister's post. Dr. Singh had served as India's finance minister in a previous Congress party government headed by Rao, and is considered by many as the chief architect of India's economic reforms of the early 1990s. Moreover, the fact that he was not known to have any political ambitions and that he enjoyed a good rapport with Sonia Gandhi probably helped him to win the post. Sonia retained the post of the Leader of the Majority and the Chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party. This arrangement enabled her to keep political control of the party and to deal with the political fire fights in the giant coalition government while leaving the management of the country in hands of Manmohan Singh.
Jyoti Basu, the former Communistchief minister of West Bengal who was deeply involved during the meeting to decide the PM, said after the meeting that her children feared for her life and she was therefore reluctant to become PM.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on March 23, 2006 announced her resignation from the Lok Sabha and also as chairperson of the National Advisory Council. According to Indian electoral law, an elected person cannot hold an office of profit (meaning paid posts). She was re-elected from her constituency Rae Bareilly in May 2006.
Family
Despite her father's vehement opposition to her marriage to Rajiv, Sonia maintains close links with her family in Italy.[[Citing sources citation needed]] Her son, Rahul Gandhi had also won election to the Parliament from Amethi constituency in 2004, and some consider him to be the natural heir to the reins of the party, and possibly have a chance to become a Congress leader in the future. Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra did not contest elections, but is also often speculated about in the media. Sonia and her children are estranged from Maneka Gandhi, the widow of Rajiv's younger brother Sanjay Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi, who are both members of the BJP.
Literary contributions
Sonia Gandhi has written two books: Rajiv and Rajiv's World. In addition, she has also edited Freedom's Daughter and Two Alone, Two Together (two volumes of letters exchanged between Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi from 1922 to 1964).
References
S. R. ET AL. BAKSHI (1998) Sonia Gandhi, The President of AICC South Asia Books. ISBN 8170249880
Rupa Chaterjee (1999) Sonia Gandhi: The Lady in Shadow Butala. ISBN 8187277025
C. Rupa, Rupa Chaterjee (2000) Sonia Mystique South Asia Books. ISBN 8185870241
