India's Gandhi expected in U.S. for medical check-up: media

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party, is expected to fly to the United States for a scheduled medical check-up, a news agency report said, just days after she took ill during a marathon parliament debate. "Her going to the U.S. for a medical check-up is due," the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency quoted an unnamed senior party leader as saying. Gandhi, who underwent surgery in the United States for an undisclosed ailment in August 2011 flew there on September 2 last year for a check-up. She went again in February this year, the PTI report said. There is a speculation she may fly there on Monday, it added. Last week, Gandhi, 66, returned home from a Delhi hospital after taking ill in parliament. She was led limping out of the Lok Sabha last Monday by her son and colleagues, and then taken by car to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences hospital in the capital. The Italian-born politician has played a slightly reduced public role since her treatment in 2011. She is still the world's sixth most powerful woman, Forbes magazine said last year. The party is usually very secretive about Gandhi's health, but several media reports said she had been treated for cancer at New York's Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 2011. The ruling Congress party's hopes for re-election next year rest on Gandhi and her son Rahul, who was named vice-president of the party earlier this year in anticipation of a greater role on the public stage. (Reporting by Ratnajyoti Dutta and Sanjeev Miglani; editing by David Evans)