Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday spent over 15 minutes with school children from different parts of the country to send out a message of being hale and hearty to shut the speculation that she is hanging the boots and anointing Rahul as party president.

The Congress media managers circulated photographs of her interaction with the children on the occasion of the National Education Day, hoping that the visuals will put an end to such speculations that were fuelled further after she gave a political rally in Uttarakhand on Wednesday a miss. This was to be her first public rally since her surgery in the US in August.

She has been entertaining very few party leaders at her 10 Janpath residence, directing the most instead to meet Rahul, but the party managers insist that she has been meeting a large number of visitors, including union ministers and Congress chief ministers.

She could not make it to Chamoli for the rally because of high fever and that had nothing to do with her recent "undisclosed illness" that made her to go abroad for treatment, the party managers insisted.