Sonia had undergone a surgery in the US last month. She returned India few days back and has started party work.
The meeting of Central Election Committee, which she presided, was her first collective interaction with Congress leaders after she arrived in New Delhi last week from the US.
Party general secretary Janardan Dwivedi said, “Gandhi participated in the meeting today happily and normally as she used to do earlier”.
Like in the past, Gandhi came out of her house to welcome Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and see him off after the 65-minute-long meeting.
The drift within the Congress and the Government in the last two months exposed the dependence of the party on Sonia.
“Sonia Gandhi was very happy. I was unable to realise that she had a surgery,” said Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh after the meet.
Sonia held the meeting just a day after the debate of Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi as prime ministerial candidates in 2014 was thrown up. The sense of drift and loss of direction within the party came even as BJP seemed to be gaining the upper hand.
In Sonia’s absence factionalism within the Congress has come out in open, with many MPs pointing fingers at senior ministers for failure to deal with the Anna movement.