Birender Singh says won’t contest upcoming LS polls
ROHTAK : Union minister of steel Birender Singh, 72, has said that he will not contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and will stay away from active politics after his Rajya Sabha term ends in 2022.
The minister, however, maintained he would work on strengthening the party as he was fit and healthy to do so. “I have been in politics from the past 47 years. Three years more are pending for my RS term to end, that means my political career would be over 50 years long by 2022. At that age, I could have other priorities. I have conveyed to the BJP high command as well to use me in strengthening our party. Rest is their decision,” he said.
Birender, the grandson of peasant leader Chhotu Ram, had contested his first MLA election on Congress ticket in 1977 from Uchana in Jind. He had won the seat by a large margin despite the anti-congress wave at that time.
He has been an MLA five times and an MP thrice— once in the Lok Sabha and twice in the Rajya Sabha. Birender had quit the Congress in 2014 to join the BJP, where he was sworn in as the cabinet minister with charges of ministry of rural development, panchayati raj, drinking water and sanitation. He was later made the steel minister in a cabinet reshuffle. As the minister plans to retire, his son Brijender Singh, a 1988 batch Haryana-cadre IAS officer, is set to take to take the political plunge. Brijender even addressed a farmers’ rally in Jind last year, though denied that he was joining politics.
When the union minister was asked if he was saying no to fight the elections in order to reserve the ticket for his son, he did not give a clear answer. “My son will have to do it himself if he wants to.. I have given my reasons for not contesting,” he said. The MP expressed his confidence in the BJP and said the saffron party will defeat Deepender Hooda in Rohtak in the upcoming LS polls.