Sonia Gandhi

Sonia Gandhi (née Maino) was born on 9 December 1946 in a small village near Vicenza, Italy. An Indian politician, she is the longest-serving president of the Indian National Congress.

She was raised in a Roman Catholic family and, after her primary education, moved to Cambridge, England, for language classes, where she met Rajiv Gandhi; they married in 1968. She then moved to India and lived with her mother-in-law, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in New Delhi, and kept away from public life even during her husband's premiership. After Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, Congress leaders invited her to lead the party, which she declined; she agreed to join politics in 1997 after much pleading and was nominated party president the following year. She held the post from 1998 to 2017, twenty-two years, and returned as interim president in 2019 until 2022.

Under her leadership the Congress formed a government with other centre-left parties after the 2004 elections, and she is credited with being instrumental in forming the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). She declined the premiership after the 2004 victory and led the ruling alliance and the National Advisory Council instead; the advisory councils she presided over are credited with rights-based welfare schemes such as the Right to Information, the Food Security Bill and MGNREGA. Her foreign birth has been a subject of debate, and she drew criticism in the National Herald case during Manmohan Singh's premiership. Since 2024 she has been a member of the Rajya Sabha representing Rajasthan.