Number Theory: Looking back at Sonia Gandhi’s Lok Sabha career

Both in terms of victory margin and vote share, Sonia Gandhi reached the peak of her electoral career in the 2006 by-election to the Rae Bareli seat in UP

Sonia Gandhi, who has been the Congress’s longest-serving president and a Lok Sabha MP for the last 25 years, will not be contesting a Lok Sabha elections anymore. A day after she filed the nomination papers for Rajya Sabha in Rajasthan, she cited age (77) and ill-health as the reasons for not contesting the general elections this time in a letter to the voters of her parliamentary constituency Rae Bareli. Sonia Gandhi’s decision to move from the House of the People to the House of the Elders in Parliament is a good occasion to look back at her political career and the Congress’s fortunes.

Sonia Gandhi, 77, filed the nomination papers for Rajya Sabha on Wednesday(AP FILE PHOTO)