BJP should run from workers’ contributions, not donations from money bags: Amit Shah

“BJP workers should say with pride that we run this party from our money and no industrialist, contractor, money bag or builder can run it,” Shah said.

He, however, added that as party president he cannot say the BJP can fund all its organisational and election expenses from its workers’ contributions. “This is not possible today,” he said.

“If means are not pure, then our goals cannot be attained in a good way. If the party has to be kept pure… If the party starts running from the money of money bags, builders, contractors, those with black money, then it will malign our means to realise our goals,” he said.

There should be a public discussion on how election expenses can be brought down and how to bring probity in poll funding, he said, expressing confidence that such an exercise will begin under the BJP’s leadership.

The Modi government, he asserted, has taken steps to clamp down on the influence of black money in politics by limiting cash donations to Rs 2,000.

Laws against corruption have been made so stringent that those breaking it will be caught and that those who were involved in scams are sweating even in this Delhi winter, he said.

Fugitive businessmen Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi had escaped the country because the Modi government started putting accused like them behind bars, he claimed.