Sonia Gandhi ( Maino; born 9 December 1946) is an Indian politician. She is the president of the Indian National Congress, a big tent political party, which has governed India for most of its post-independence history. She took over as the party leader in 1998, seven years after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, her husband and a former Prime Minister of India, and remained in office until 2017 after serving for twenty-two years. She returned to the post in 2019 after her son, Rahul Gandhi, resigned.