NEW DELHI, Mar 27: The Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said she declined the BJP’s offer to contest the parliamentary elections because she did not have the ‘kind of fund’ required to contest the Lok Sabha polls.
BJP President JP Nadda had given her the option to contest either from Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu. “After thinking for a week or ten days, I went back to say, ‘Maybe not’. I do not have that kind of money to contest. I also have a problem whether it is Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu. It’s also going to be a question of various other winnability criteria that they use… Are you from this community or are you from that religion? Are you from this? I said no, I do not think I am going to able to do it,” she said at a media event in Delhi on Wednesday.
“I am very grateful they accepted my argument… So I am not contesting,” she added. When asked why the country’s finance minister does not have enough funds to fight elections, she said the Consolidated Fund of India does not belong to her. “My salary, my earnings, and my savings are mine and not the Consolidated Fund of India,” she said.
The ruling BJP fielded several existing Rajya Sabha members in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, beginning April 19. These include Piyush Goyal, Bhupender Yadav, Rajiv Chandrasekhar, Mansukh Mandaviya, and Jyotiraditya Scindia. Ms Sitharaman is a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka.
The minister said she would be campaigning for other candidates. “I will attend a lot of media events and go with the candidates – like tomorrow I will be going for Rajiv Chandrasekhar’s campaign. I’ll be on the campaign trail,” she added.
(Manas Dasgupta)