Nirmala Sitharaman not contesting 2024 elections due to no money !

The Union Finance Minister of India, Nirmala Sitharaman on 27th March, Wednesday, said while responding to a question at the Times New Summit 2024, that she will not contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections because she does not have the required money for it. The Bharatiya Janata Party offered her to contest elections but she pleaded that she did not have the ‘kind of fund’ that was required to contest in the Lok Sabha General Election Polls.

What’s the reason behind her not contesting elections?

The BJP President JP Nadda had given Sitaraman the option to contest from either of the two souther states : Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu as of what she told. Her reply to her decision was given after she thought about it for around ten days and said that she might not contest. The reason for the same being primarily her not having enough money.

Her secondary reason for not contesting was that she had a problem with either of the states as questions of various other “winnablilty” criterias were to be seen. Along with her contesting, came questions like : what community is she from?, what religion is she from?, etc because of which she denied from contesting the Lok Sabha Elections 2024.

Nirmala Sitharaman, a politician who is in her second term in the Rajya Sabha, had been sounded out by the BJP’s top brass to consider being a Lok Sabha candidate in the upcoming elections of 2024, along with some of her colleagues from the Upper House cabinet colleagues like Commerce and Industry Minister, Piyush Goyal and Environment and Labour Minister, Bhupender Yadav. She also said that sh3 is very grateful that they accepted her argument and let her not contest peacefully without any further demands.

When she was asked as to why she does not have enough funds to fight in the elections despite being the country’s finance minister, she said that the Consolidated Fund of India does not belong to her and her salary, her earnings and her savings are all her and not the Consolidated Fund Of India. The ruling party, BJP has fielded many existing Rajya Sabha members in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections 2024 which are beginning from 19th April. These include Rajiv Chandrasekhar, Mansukh Mandaviya, Jyotiraditya Scindia and more. Ms Nirmala Sitharaman is a Rajya Sabha member from the Karnataka Constituency and said that she will be campaigning for other candidates.

On 2nd March, the Bharatiya Janata Party had released its first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. The Indian Prime Minister,  Narendra Modi will yet again contest the Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi. Out of the 195 candidates listed, 34 of them are Ministers from Centre and States, while 2 are former Chief Ministers who are on the list.

Nirmala Sitaraman history :

Nirmala Sitharaman has previously served as the Union Defence Minister. In her career till now, she was elected as the Rajya Sabha MP from Andhra Pradesh in 2014. She also served as the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs and after that as the Minister for Commerce and Industry with Independent Charge. As the Defence Minister, she is credited with handling all the decision-making process which is related to procurement in the defence sector. She also constituted a Defence Planning Committee which formulated an “action plan” to effectively overcome the several security challenges which were faced by the nation.

Nirmala Sitharaman joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2008 and since then has served as a national spokesperson for the party .