Skip to footer

Sonia Gandhi stable in hospital, reports Indian press

Sonia Gandhi, India's most powerful politician and the leader of the ruling Congress party alliance, was in stable condition after falling ill during a debate in Parliament.

|
AP/File
Indian minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Kumari Selja (l.) walks with Sonia Gandhi (r.), who chairs the ruling United Progressive Alliance and Congress party, in New Delhi, India, Aug. 26, 2013.
  • By Associated Press

| NEW DELHI

Sonia Gandhi, India's most powerful politician and the leader of the ruling Congress party alliance, was in stable condition after falling ill during a debate in Parliament.

Press Trust of India, quoting unidentified sources at the hospital where Gandhi was taken, said she was no longer in the intensive care unit, where she had been taken initially because of chest pain.

Gandhi had been suffering from a fever since Sunday, according to news reports. She appeared fine during a parliamentary speech earlier Monday, but reports said she had to be escorted from Parliament in the evening by colleagues and her son Rahul, another leader of the Congress party.

Gandhi, 66, was born in Italy but rose to power after the killing of her husband, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The Congress party has long kept a careful veil over Gandhi's personal life, despite her immense influence. She was flown to the United States for surgery in 2011, with some Indian news outlets saying she had been treated for cancer. But the party never gave more than cursory information about her illness, calling it a personal matter.

She is widely seen as the true power behind Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the quiet technocrat who has held India's top job since the party returned to power in 2004. Congress has been badly battered over the past year or so by a series of corruption scandals, bitter internal feuding and an inability to deal with a stumbling economy and deep-rooted problems with poverty, infrastructure and education.

India holds its next national elections in 2014.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Sonia Gandhi stable in hospital, reports Indian press
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0826/Sonia-Gandhi-stable-in-hospital-reports-Indian-press
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe