Sonia Gandhi is an Indian Politician who is currently holding the position as President of the Indian National Congress.
Gandhi was born on 9 December 1946 as Edvige Antonia Albina Màino in Lusiana, Veneto, Italy. Gandhi was raised in a traditional Roman Catholic family and received a Catholic education.
Later on in her college years, she worked as a waitress at the Varsity Restaurant in Cambridge (Greek restaurant), where she met her future husband, Rajiv Gandhi.
Rajiv Gandhi is a part of the politically powerful Nehru-Gandhi family, who was a mechanical engineering student at the University of Cambridge.
In 1968, she married Gandhi, changed her name to ‘Sonia Gandhi’, and moved into her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi’s house.
In 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Therefore, Rajiv Gandhi succeeded as her Prime Minister in addition to increased involvement from Sonia Gandhi with public relations.
Unfortunately, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 and Sonia Gandhi was considered the natural heir to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. She was thus offered leadership of the Congress Party, yet she rejected it because she did not want to become involved with politics.
In future years, she saw the decreased quality of the Congress and agreed to join the party as a primary member in the Calcutta Plenary Session in 1997 and became the party leader in 1998. In 1999, she was then elected the Leader of the Opposition of the 13th Lok Sabha.
The Congress Party sought out to become as the single largest party in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. She decided not to become the Prime Minister herself and selected the prominent economist Manmohan Singh to serve in the position.
Gandhi was elected to presidency of the party for the fourth time in 2010, becoming the longest serving president in the history of the Congress Party. In addition, she has been serving as the Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance in the Lok Sabha since 2004.