Indian opposition leader Sonia Gandhi Saturday filed her nomination to seek re-election as head of her Congress party amid a leadership challenge.
The Italian-born Gandhi filed her nomination at the Congress party headquarters here as thousands of her supporters sung and danced. Her candidature was supported by 25 party leaders.
Posters of Gandhi covered the walls and compound of the Congress office, showing her along with husband Rajiv and mother-in-law Indira Gandhi.
Both Rajiv and Indira Gandhi were Congress presidents and former prime ministers who were later assassinated.
The Italian-born Gandhi is being challenged for the top job by veteran Congress leader Jitendra Prasada.
Elections for the new Congress president are due to be held on November 11 or 12, and are being contested amid a spurt of militancy in the troubled state of Kashmir, a sharp increase in fuel prices and an industrial slowdown.
In a bid to to shore up the ailing fortunes of the Congress party and her hold over the party ahead of the November elections, the reclusive Gandhi has tried to change her political image.
Arguably India's most powerful woman, Gandhi is desperately trying to shed the image of an aloof leader, ensconced in her tightly-guarded New Delhi home and surrounded by a coterie of close advisers
In the past she has traveled around India by plane or helicopter, often turning up hours late for public meetings and then leaving after a short speech delivered in heavily-accented Hindi and a wave to the teeming crowds.
But last month she eschewed her trademark security paraphernalia and for the first time took a scheduled train to visit a troubled area in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
A senior party leader said earlier this month that Gandhi's moves were aimed at countering public opinion of an upper-class individual with little connection to the realities facing the vast majority of Indians.
Gandhi's mother-in-law, former prime minister Indira Gandhi, and her father Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first premier, had tight control over the Congress and displayed a common touch despite being born in a very rich and aristocratic Hindu family.
Indira Gandhi's son, Rajiv, educated in a public school and Cambridge University, had power thrust upon him after his mother's assassination in 1984.
He was widely perceived to be out of sync with the plight of the poor and India's problems when he started out. But his halting Hindi and his speeches improved with time and he had acquired a populist appeal by the time of his assassination in 1991.
Sonia Gandhi was forced by admirers to take over the mantle of Congress president about two years ago after a leadership crisis -- NEW DELHI (AFP)
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