New Delhi, Sep 17 : Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi  attended a meeting of the Congress core group, the top decision making body of the party on Friday. 

Rahul Gandhi attended his first ever meeting of the Congress Core Group, held at the 7, Race Course road residence of PM Manmohan Singh, sources said.

His presence at the Core Group meeting is being seen in party as an indication of the party's youth icon being prepared for a larger role.

Rahul Gandhi was among the four members in the panel constituted by Congress President Sonia Gandhi to see the party matters in her absence from India due to surgery abroad for an undisclosed ailment.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi was absent in  Friday's meeting of the core group, which came a day after she chaired a meeting of the Central Election Committee to decide on party candidates for the UP assembly polls, scheduled to be held in 2012.

It was Sonia Gandhi's first public appearance before party leaders and her first such interaction with them after she came back here on September 8 after the surgery on August 4.