INDIA: Nation Remembers First Woman Prime Minister

The Speaker, Lok Sabha, Smt. Meira Kumar, the Union Home Minister,  Sushil Kumar Shinde, the Chairperson, National Advisory Council, Smt. Sonia Gandhi, the Chairman of BJP Parliamentary Party  L.K. Advani and other dignitaries after paying floral tributes to former Prime Minister, Late Smt. Indira Gandhi on her birth anniversary, at Parliament House in New Delhi on November 19, 2012. Photo © PIB

NEW DELHI, India (NNN-Xinhua) -- India Monday remembered the country's first woman Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on her 95th birth anniversary.

Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and ruling Congress chief Sonia Gandhi -- Indira's daughter-in-law -- were among the top politicians who paid floral tributes at Gandhi's memorial in the national capital.

Gandhi, the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, served as the country's first woman prime minister for three consecutive terms between 1966 and 1977 and a fourth term from 1980 to 1984.

She was born on Nov. 19, 1917, and was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on Oct. 31, 1984, in retaliation for her ordering of Operation Blue Star which involved Indian Army storming the Golden Temple in the northern city of Amritsar to remove Sikh separatists from the community's most religious place of worship. -- NNN-XINHUA