NEW DELHI: Bhartiya Janshakti Party leader Uma Bharti on Tuesday announced that the party would contest the upcoming Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections under the leadership of Madan Lal Khurana and give a tough competition to its archrival, the Bharatiya Janata Party.

At a rally organised at V.P. House lawns here, Ms. Bharti said she would accompany the former Delhi Chief Minister during his campaign for the civic polls across the Capital and reach out to the poorest of the poor.

"We will raise issues such as lack of civic amenities like drinking water, unemployment among the marginalised and the huge gap between the rich and the poor,'' the firebrand right wing leader said.

Raising issues related to women, Ms. Bharti said women feel unsafe in the Capital as cases of rapes have risen alarmingly.

During winter, she said, a number of people could be seen lying on the Capital's pavements without proper clothing. Her party would work for the uplift of such people.

Lamenting that modernisation was not reaching out to the poverty-stricken residents of the city, Ms. Bharti said: "A number of schools are opening up but they are inaccessible to the poor. Similarly state-of-the-art hospitals are coming up at so many places yet they are out of bounds for those below the poverty line. We don't have a magic wand to redress all the problems with one stroke but will do our best to remove the sufferings of the poor, especially those whose livelihood has been snatched due to the development policies of the Government."

Accusing the BJP of diluting its Hindutva agenda, Ms. Bharti said: "Earlier, BJP leader L.K. Advani used to call the Congress and Communist parties pseudo-secularists. But now when the BJP speaks about Hindutva it sounds like pseudo-secularists. It is neither following the Swadeshi concept nor following the ideals of Syama Prasad Mookerjee."

Mr. Khurana said rising prices would be the central issue in the party's MCD election campaign.

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