India's main opposition chief Sonia Gandhi fails to chair party meeting due to health reasons

India's main opposition Congress party's chief Sonia Gandhi failed to chair the party's highest decision-making body's meeting on Monday as she felt unwell, sources said.

Her son and Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi, the second-in-command of the party, chaired the Congress Working Committee meeting, which is significant in the run-up to the Winter Session of the Indian Parliament that begins on Nov. 16, the sources said.

"In this meeting, the party is to finalise its strategy as well as take a call on extending the deadline for the completion of the Congress' organisational elections, which were to be completed by Dec. 31," the sources said.

Just three months back, 69-year-old Sonia Gandhi had a surgery to repair a shoulder injury that she had sustained at a campaign event in the northern Indian city of Varanasi, which is also Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency.

In 2011, Sonia had gone to the U.S. to get surgery for an undisclosed medical condition. In 2014, she was admitted to a Delhi hospital for treatment of an infection. And in 2013, she had to be rushed to a hospital for a few hours after she fell ill in the Parliament.

Sonia, the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, is also is the head of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has governed India for most of the time since its independence in 1947. However, her party lost the 2014 general elections to Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Endit