And exporter with ‘Versace as client’

An economics graduate from Sri Venkateshwara College, New Delhi, Vaishali began as a cost accountant in a Delhi-based company. Later, along with her husband Syed Khursheed Ali, she started her own firm, KV Creations Pvt Ltd, which exports textile fashion accessories, especially buttons.

Vaishali may be a first-timer in politics but is a known name among women social workers in UP.

“I was born and brought up in Delhi and had not even seen a village until I got married. It was in 2000 that I decided to do something for the region and started my own NGO. I started organising health camps,” says Vaishali, who started her election campaign Tuesday. Last year, she says, she was invited by the House of Commons of Canada for her work on women empowerment in the region.

Mother of a 19-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old boy, Vaishali says, “Women’s security will be on top of my agenda.”

The contest will be a tough one beginning within the party as district cadres consider her “an outsider”. Also, until now she had been working in the adjoining district of Lakhimpur Khiri, where the party has given the ticket to sitting Congress MP Zafar Ali Naqvi.

“I wish to promote the politics of development against the existing politics of caste,” says Vaishali.

In her short political career, Vaishali has been associated with two parties. In 2008, Vaishali had joined the Samajwadi Party but quit and joined the Congress in 2010. She was made the district convener of the NGO cell of the Mahila Congress in Sitapur, where she worked through her NGO, KV Sewa Sansthan.

Vaishali’s father was chief manager in the State Trading Company Ltd in Delhi and her brother is working with Apple Inc in California.