By Moinuddin Ghani

New Delhi, Nov 13 (IANS): In the run-up to the MCD polls, the Congress is reaching out to the electorate with issues that resonate with them like cleanliness, faulty streetlights, education, increasing corruption.

Senior leaders of the Delhi Pradesh Congress are of the view that nowadays the elections are fought with money power and the party does not have money for campaigning.

They claimed that the work done during the Congress regime was evident but nowadays, the parties are claiming development in advertisements which is far from reality.

Talking exclusively to IANS, five-time Congress MLA from Seelampur, Chaudhary Mateen Ahmed said: "We do not have money to campaign for the elections but we will reach out to people and tell them about various issues, including lack of skilled staff in schools, faulty streetlights, lack of cleanliness and development."

He said: "We have Congress governments in only two states which are small."

"We will turn the MCD schools into better educational facilities in reality. This time too the selection process of the candidates will be the same. Very soon the party is likely to announce 100 candidates for the polls" he claimed.

Attacking Delhi's Arvind Kejriwal government, Ahmed said: The Delhi government had installed tiles in place of plaster in a few schools and replaced old grills in windows with new ones, but world class education cannot be provided with false advertisements about it or by installing tiles, instead world class teachers should be there. Most of the Delhi government schools have vacancies for posts of principal. If you did not have good teachers for the past eight years, how have you provided world class education."

While the BJP and AAP are spending huge amounts of money on campaigning and "boasting", the real development work was done by the Congress which can still be seen, he claimed.