BJP should run from workers' contributions: Amit Shah

The BJP should run with contributions from its workers, its president Amit Shah said on Monday, asserting that the party's path to reach its goals will be maligned if it depends on donations from "moneybags, builders, contractors and those with black money".

Shah also called for a public debate on reducing election expenses and bringing probity in poll funding. He expressed confidence that such an exercise will begin under his party and will lead other parties towards probity.

Addressing party workers on the 51st death anniversary of BJP's ideological guide Deen Dayal Upadhyay, he asked party workers to donate a part of their earnings to the organisation and said at least two in every booth across the country should contribute Rs 1,000 through Prime Minister Narendra Modi's app or through cheques.

Modi and he have already made their contributions, Shah said.

BJP workers should say with pride that they run the party from their money and some "industrialist, contractor, money bag or builder cannot run it". he said.

The BJP chief also cited Upadhyay to say a goal cannot be attained with "purity" if the means to attain it are not pure.

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 the 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 moneybags, builders, contractors, those with black money, then it will malign our means to realise our goals," he said.

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 while the earlier dispensation colluded with them, he said, in a dig at the Congress.

"People have fled abroad and we are asked (why) this person has escaped or that person has escaped. Our workers get bothered. Why did they flee? They fled because we began putting such people behind bars... Earlier, the ones in power colluded with them. Now you have put a watchman (Modi) in power, so robbers have fled," Shah said.

Modi, he said, is working to root out corruption from government works. It is the responsibility of all BJP workers that the party is run from their contributions, he added.

According to Shah, seven state units of the party have collected so much from workers that the interest on the corpus is enough to meet their organisational expenses.

"It should be our pledge today that all our state and district units must have enough corpus or fixed deposits in five years so that their interest can meet the party's expenses. And that corpus must be built from the hard earned money of BJP workers," he said.