Mrs Gandhi appeared in person in the southern state of Karnataka where she is contesting one of the Congress Party's safest parliamentary seats.

But Mrs Gandhi, who has frequently been accused of being too reclusive, has also taken her political message into cyberspace via a Website at soniagandhionline.com.

The new site, called "Face to face with Sonia Gandhi", invites users to send a question to the Congress leader and promises to deliver an answer within 24 hours.

Asking questions

BBC's Mike Wooldridge: Today is a test of Sonia Gandhi's campaigning style

Congress says the service was introduced "to empower individuals to be in a position to ask Mrs Gandhi questions regarding the Congress party, the party president's view on party positions and on the upcoming elections."

But with fewer than a million regular Internet users in India the move has been dismissed by critics as a political gimmick, rather than an effective campaign tool in its own right.

Most campaigning is considerably less high-tech

Nonetheless, incumbent Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to follow suit with his own site in the next few days.

Ghostly answers

Political journalist Seema Mustapha told the BBC the intention of the site is probably to carry Mrs Gandhi's message to what are known as NRIs (non-resident Indians) living in the UK and America who do not have a vote but are still considered to have influential opinions.

The replies purport to come from Mrs Gandhi herself, but with Indian political campaigns reliant on candidates getting out and pressing the flesh, ghost writers from Congress are thought to be managing the site on her behalf.

Safe seat?

Mrs Gandhi is contesting the southern town of Bellary, one of the safest Congress seats in the 543-member parliament.

The town's electors have voted for the centrist party in all 12 federal elections since India won independence from Britain in 1947, and Congress is confident they will do so again.

"For us, it is not a question of whether Sonia will win," Congress General Secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad told a public meeting there on Thursday. "It is just a question of by how many votes she will win."

But she may not find the going so easy.

The BBC's Mike Wooldridge says Mrs Gandhi faces an extremely high-profile BJP opponent in former Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Sushma Swaraj.