She is the fifth from the family to have adorned the post which was once held by Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
As Congress turns 125 this month, Sonia Gandhi, whose life has elements of both fairy tale and tragedy, will be setting a number of records as she turns 64 shortly.
The feats include becoming the longest serving president of the ruling Congress party and the first one to lead it into coalition politics and nominating a prime minister after herself declining that post.
Hailing from the "first" family of Congress, she is the first president of the party who is an Italian-born Indian citizen. Incidentally, she is turning 64 on Wednesday.
Annie Besant and Nellie Sen Gupta were some other foreign-born presidents of the party in the pre-Independence era.
She is the fifth from the family to have adorned the post which was once held by Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Her son Rahul is being referred to as the future leader.
Once derided as "reader than a leader", Sonia is at the helm of affairs of the ruling party for close to a dozen years after the party sent her predecessor the late Sitaram Kesri packing in mid-1998 to revive the organisation after a poor show in elections.
While her husband late Rajiv Gandhi was the party chief from 1984 to 1991, her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi led it from 1978 to 1984 and was also the party chief for a brief period during the prime ministership of Pandit Nehru.
Sonia has led the Congress-led UPA to victory for a second successive time in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year and the feat is significant in view of the fact that Rajiv had lost power in 1989.
This was despite Rajiv winning a landslide victory for the Congress in 1984 in the wake of the assassination of his mother and prime minister Indira Gandhi.
It was not a smooth ride for Sonia as her detractors earlier found fault with her Hindi diction and dubbed her a "reader than a leader".
In fact, she has been the first leader of the party whose foreign origin became an issue and even led to parting of ways by some prominent leaders, including Sharad Pawar, PA Sangma and Tariq Anwar.
And the interesting fact is that the party floated by these leaders -- the Nationalist Congress Party -- is sharing power with the Congress for the past ten years in Maharashtra and more than five years at the Centre. Now, the NCP has officially declared that the issue is irrelevant.
In 1999, Sonia's moves brought the Vajpayee government down, but she could not form an alternate government despite claiming she has the support of 272 MPs.
Five years later, she had her sweet revenge on the BJP by bursting its 'feel good' balloon and later staging what her partymen hail as the "renunciation" act and anointing Manmohan Singh as prime minister.
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