Congress party president Sonia Gandhi figures as the seventh most powerful woman of the world in the Forbes list which is topped by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

64-year-old Sonia Gandhi, who is recouping from unspecified surgery in a US hospital, is ranked seventh just ahead of US First Lady Michell Obama in a list of 100 most powerful women of the world released by the Forbes magazine.

Indian-American Indra Nooyi, the head of soft drink giant PepsiCo, has been ranked fourth, followed by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and Melinda Gates co-chair and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Two Indian corporate executives Chandra Kochhar of the ICICI (43rd) and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon (99th) have figured in this list in which the third place is occupied by Dilma Rousseff, who became Brazil’s first woman President.