Amid deafening drum beats and loud firecrackers, Sonia Gandhi was Saturday unanimously re-elected president of the Congress party that heads India's ruling coalition.

A visibly jubilant Gandhi, elected to the post for the third consecutive term, warned party colleagues that power should not make them take things easy but should help brighten the party's prospects.

With cabinet ministers and Congress leaders seated around the dais, Congress Central Election Authority chairperson Oscar Fernandes announced the result, which was anyway a foregone conclusion.

"I declare Sonia Gandhi duly elected unopposed president of the Indian National Congress," he told party leaders on the lawns of the party's headquarters on Akbar Road, prompting wild cheering and bursting of fireworks by crowds outside.

Party activists sang and danced, even as caparisoned elephants, horses, huge drums and specially ordered firecrackers added to the victory celebrations.

Congress leaders from various states vied with each other to show their loyalty to Gandhi and her family.

While the party unit from Delhi organised pyrotechnics, the Punjab and Haryana units brought along specially dressed drum beaters to play the giant drums.

Since morning, the road in front of the party headquarters resembled a festival ground, with party men bursting crackers and showering marigold, young boys walking on bamboo stilts, and two horses that danced to drum beats.

Towering above all were huge hoardings with colourful pictures of everyone -right from first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru - who was the grandfather of Gandhi's husband Rajiv Gandhi - to her married daughter Priyanka Vadra.

Gandhi expressed her "heartfelt" thanks to her party men.

"The Congress had to struggle a lot and face many challenges to return to power," said Gandhi, who last year led the country's oldest political party to power after being in the wilderness for almost a decade.

"But there is no room for complacency. We have to work hard," she said. "I want to assure you that I will work with you day and night and put all my efforts to making Congress stronger than ever," a smiling Gandhi said.

She had every reason to smile.

Her candidature was Wednesday proposed by almost 100 nominations including one by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who, however, was away in Himachal Pradesh and couldn't attend the official re-election function.

In 2000, her candidature was challenged by the late Jitendra Prasada. Though Prasada lost the election, the move was unusual in the Congress party, which has always focussed on a single leader, mostly a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

But Saturday saw a beaming young MP, Jatin, the late Prasada's son, standing at the forefront of party leaders praising Gandhi's "efficient leadership and democratic functioning".

"It (her unopposed election) shows her strength. She led our party through troubled times. So reposing our faith in her is a natural thing," Jatin Prasada told IANS.

Others agreed. "She is intelligent. She can lead the Congress to power for decades," said Sarbjit Singh Walia, a party leader from Punjab.