It was with a ceremonial puja, breaking of coconuts and an appeal to women voters that BJP Chief Minister Sushma Swaraj inaugurated the party's campaign in south Delhi's upmarket Hauz Khas locality, the 50,000-voter constituency she is contesting from.

With 50 polling centres spread across the sizable constituency, Hauz Khas roughly has a 1.5:1 man-woman voters ratio -- as per the last Lok Sabha statistics released by the Election Commission.

Little wonder that the Congress also chose a woman candidate, Kiran Walia, who is the national convener of the All Indian Congress Committee teachers's cell to rival Swaraj. A relatively new face, Walia will be contesting elections for the first time and that too against the high-profile Swaraj.

A confident Swaraj treated today'street-corner meeting -- organised by the Gulmohar Park mandal -- more like a counselling session for party cadres, familiarising them with the campaign strategy. Placing the accent on person-to-person contact, Swaraj spelt out a three-pronged brief -- ``an aggressive mode, confidence of winning, and a reminder of the promises kept''.

Though the message was passed on in a routine fashion, with the usual fantastic promises of Hauz Khas becoming the model constituency for India, today's meeting was important in other ways.

As a chief ministerial candidate, she would be busy campaigning for other candidates and may be able to make it back to her own constituency only one more Sunday before the polls. In fact, the functionaries she briefed today have the task of conducting a surrogate campaign on her behalf.

Ravi Gautam, a Congress office-bearer who has crossed over to the BJP, was paraded at the meeting. So was the name of a Congress woman member of the area, who too had joined the BJP, mentioned Swaraj.

Though a greenhorn who is trying to find her way into the tough electoral politics of the city after 30 years at the Delhi University teacher, Walia too seemed confident that the voters will reject the BJP because of its dismal performance in Delhi, not to mention the price rise. In fact almost to counter the notion of Hauz Khas being a upper-income group constituency, Walia is concentrating on pockets like Gautam Nagar, Arjun Nagar, Yusuf Sarai, Kalu Sarai and Murika village, ``where price rise and dropsy has affected people badly''.

The polling rates are much higher in these areas as compared to upmarket areas of the constituency, like Safdarjung Development Area, Safdarjung Enclave and Gulmohar Park.

But upbeat and confident Swaraj discounted such factors. ``Even when I was a Union Minister and never imagined that I would contest an assembly election from Delhi, I interacted with my constituency very closely. They know me,'' she said at the meeting.