Health good but told to avoid dust: Sushma on decision to not contest 2019 polls
Sushma Swaraj, who was in Jaipur to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party for the December 7 Rajasthan assembly elections, said that wherever she had gone for election campaigns, she had said that the event should be indoors.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, who had last month announced that she will not contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, on Saturday said the decision was due to health precautions. She also said that she was not retiring from politics.
“My health is good. But I am constantly taking precautions. Doctors have asked me to stay safe from infection, and also to avoid dust. I have to save myself from dust. No matter how much I try, I can’t avoid dust during elections,” Sushma Swaraj, who suffers from diabetes and had undergone a kidney transplant in December 2016, told ANI.
The minister, who was in Jaipur to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party for the December 7 Rajasthan assembly elections, said that wherever she had gone for election campaigns, she had said that the event should be indoors.
“Avoiding dust is a limitation of my health. And therefore, I said I won’t fight next Lok Sabha elections. But I never said I will retire from politics,” she said.
Addressing a press conference in Indore while campaigning for the November 28 Madhya Pradesh assembly elections, Swaraj, 66, announced that she will not contest the next parliamentary elections.
“It is the party which decides, but I have made up my mind not to contest the next (Lok Sabha) elections,” she said, adding that she had conveyed her decision to the party leadership. Due to health reasons, Swaraj has mostly stayed away from campaigning, and limited her public interaction and travel since last year.
Swaraj , the BJP’s most prominent woman leader, is a four-time Lok Sabha MP, and has been member of the Rajya Sabha for three terms. She won from Vidisha for the second time in a row in 2014.
Minutes after her announcement, her husband, former Mizoram Governor Swaraj Kaushal, expressed his support.
“Madam - Thank you very much for your decision not to contest any more elections. I remember there came a time when even Milkha Singh stopped running,” he said admiringly in a series of tweets to his wife, tracing her long career in electoral politics.
