``I'll make cremation grounds cold,'' promises Bibi Khalra, ``heal people's hearts, prevent the eruption of militancy, punish criminals, rapists and capitalist murderers, free people from the proponents of superstition and outdated beliefs, free labourers and oppressed people of the state, and usher in the concept of a value-based society.''

Khalra is a candidate of Gurcharan Singh Tohra's All India Shiromani Akali Dal and BSP combine. More importantly for her, she is a part of the Khalra Action Committee,an Amritsar-based organisation formed to take up the cases of others like herself.

Lines of pain and suffering are etched on Khalra's face, a testimony to the years she has spent battling in courts and outside, searching the state for her husband. The latter is now something of a Sikh icon in the villages of Tarn Taran. In fact, a printed calendar here places him in the ranks of Banda Bahadur and Bhindranwale.

Dressed in a printed salwar-kameez with a small kirpan slung at her waist, Bibi Khalra has now taken up his cause. ``I'm not going to say that I will give people free bus passes or that the postman will ring the bell and give them their pension,'' she says. ``All I'm saying is that mine is a fight for principles, I'm going to struggle, and be there for the people wherever there is a human rights violation.''

To reinforce this, her manifesto -- written in strident colloquial Punjabi -- quotes the words of Guru Nanak: ``Fire is the chariot of Kalyug, falsehood is its charioteer.'' Exhorting peopleto adopt ``the Sikh way of life'', it draws a parallel between the unidentified bodies of people ``killed'' by the police during terrorism and those of soldiers who died in Kargil.

Accompanied by a small group of workers of the Khalra Action Committee (many of them committed Sikh youths from Amritsar colleges), Bibi Khalra tours villages, her campaign distinguished by its ordinariness, sans ostentatious security and money power. ``We do not need to campaign. People are with us from the heart,'' she explains.

Most of her campaigners too claim to be police victims. One of these is the demure Baljeet Kaur Chabahal, whose brother was allegedly picked up by the police in 1993. A visit to the homes of similarly affected families in Tarn Taran villages strikes an immediate chord. Exclaims a forthright old man in Chabahal village: ``We brought the Badal sarkar to power, but he became a yes-man. We want to choose an MP like Bibi so that she presents the truth about what is happening in Punjab.'' Adds another inneighbouring Panjwar, home of the infamous Paramjit Panjwar, head of the Khalistan Commando Force: ``She belongs to a tragic family like us, so will get us justice. She is the wife of a man who sacrificed himself for us.''

Khalra herself is not unduly worried about winning or losing. And even though she is Tohra's official candidate, she does not respect him. Her trump card remains Bhai Ranjit Singh -- he will be addressing rallies and exploiting Sikh religious sentiments.

But more than anything else, Khalra and her comrades are striving to usher in a ``revolution''. Exclaims a young worker, ``This is the area where families have borne sacrifices. We have been through two dynastic rules -- Badal and Kairons. We want to purge Sikh politics, and start afresh.''

Having started that journey herself, Bibi Khalra's voice thickens with remembered anguish as she remarks: ``If you put gold into fire, it emerges stronger. My two children and I have been through it. Earlier a woman used to die as a sati, but Ithink it is a greater sacrifice to live on and keep struggling."