NEW DELHI - Sonia Gandhi moved a step closer Saturday to becoming India's first foreign-born prime minister when her Congress party, the upset winner in a parliamentary vote, unanimously re-elected her to lead them in the legislature.

The largely formal move reflected her party's apparent confidence that potential members of a parliamentary coalition now being formed will not object to her Italian birth or try to prevent her from becoming the latest in the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to lead India.

Congress scored a stunning general election victory this week over Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Hindu-nationalist coalition, and is now firmly on course to form a coalition government and take power within days.

"We are all aware that we have an enormous task ahead of us," Gandhi told the lawmakers at the parliament building in New Delhi. "The way ahead is fraught with difficulties. Let us therefore not be complacent."

Gandhi, 57, has scheduled meetings over the weekend with her allies, mostly leftist parties. If she gets their support, she would follow in the footsteps of her husband Rajiv, assassinated in 1991 and her mother-in-law Indira, slain in 1984, to the premiership. Indira Gandhi's father Jawaharlal Nehru was India's first prime minister, taking power after it gained independence from Britain in 1947.

Gandhi said she felt "deeply humbled" standing before the new Congress lawmakers in the hall where her predecessors once stood. She would be the second woman to lead India.

There were two issues that could be stumbling blocks - Gandhi's foreign birth and the fact that she is not a Hindu. Born and raised in Italy, where the majority of people were Roman Catholic, Gandhi seldom mentions her religious beliefs, and said in a newspaper interview during the campaign that neither she nor her Italian parents were religious.

She has participated in both Hindu and Roman Catholic religious ceremonies and her children were raised as Hindus.

Gandhi is expected to ask President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam for permission to form a new government. After that formality, Kalam would swear her in so she can prove her majority in a confidence vote in Parliament.

India's 380 million voters surprised politicians and pollsters when they ousted Vajpayee's coalition, which had campaigned on its record overseeing a booming economy and peace initiatives with Pakistan. His Bharatiya Janata Party was routed.

Many senior members of Vajpayee's National Democratic Alliance focused on Gandhi's foreign birth and had said that if re-elected they would pass a constitutional amendment banning foreign-born Indian citizens from holding high office.