Shahida, who was a homemaker until now, is confident

to address the issues of her locality with the help of her husband Haroon Khan, who is the party 'shakha pramukh' of the locality for the last 16 years.

According to political analysts, Sena's effort to reach out to Muslims is not an overnight stand, but it was a decision taken after due deliberation, which has yielded positive results.

Anil Tiwari, resident editor of 'Dopahar Ka Saamna', party's mouthpiece, said, "We never used our paper to create a divide in the society on the basis of caste and religion.

However, lately we tried to connect with the Muslims and highlighted issues concerning them through our editorial pieces and I think it worked well."

Sena, well known for anti-Muslim tirades, was pulled up by the Srikrishna Commission probing the 1992-93 communal riots, proved its soft stand towards Muslims when it gave wide advertisements in the Urdu dailies few day before polling and sought their votes.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)