NEW DELHI: India’s new all-female political party said on Tuesday that it aims to rid the country of corruption and poverty, and focus on women’s issues. The United Women Front has nearly 100 members, and plans to induct thousands more to provide a “clean” alternative to India’s traditionally male-dominated parties, which are perceived as being dishonest, its leaders said.

“I believe women are more honest, more capable and more hardworking,” president Suman Krishan Kant, a women’s rights activist and wife of a late vice-president, told a news conference. Kant said the party would raise funds through individual, not corporate, donations. “Unlike other parties, we will not buy freebies and alcohol for voters,” she said.

The party will field candidates in local elections in western Gujarat and northern Himachal Pradesh states due to be held this year, and in national elections scheduled for 2009.

Party leaders said issues affecting women such as dowries and abortions of female foetuses would get special attention.—AFP