Sonia Gandhi, who spurned the job of prime minister after leading the Congress party to a shock electoral victory, has been declared "newsmaker" of 2004 by India's top news magazine. India Today said in its cover story entitled "Sonia Gandhi: India's Phoenix" that the Italian-born politician had "changed the Congress story from hope abandoned to home regained. She straddles the most volatile democracy as its most defining individual."
Gandhi, 58, is the widow of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who was assassinated in 1991.
After his death she rejected calls by Congress members to take over the party reins. It was only when the party was in dire straits in 1996 that she broke her self-imposed exile and campaigned for it.
After presiding over Congress's worst-ever drubbing in the 1998 elections, Gandhi slowly began rebuilding the party. Clad in saris, she toured the country's length and breadth, battling vituperative attacks by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party against her Italian origins.
Still, before the elections last May, analysts had written off the once mighty Congress party which dominated the first half century of India's independence.
But Gandhi, who arrived in India as a bride in her early 20s, proved pundits wrong, campaigning tirelessly across her adopted homeland and addressing rallies in fluent, if accented, Hindi.
"The spirit of her fight was matched by the magnitude of her victory," the weekly magazine said in its latest edition.
The Congress president, offered the post of prime minister after the party's win, turned down the job - saying she was listening to her "inner voice."
She instead handed the post to Manmohan Singh, a mild-mannered economist and former finance minister. The act won her widespread accolades and the news media nicknamed her "Saint Sonia."
"Gandhi is now chairperson of the ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition which, in a way, gives her 'power above the throne', " India Today said.
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