RSS forced me to quit as FM: Yashwant

NEW DELHI: As the Finance Minister in the NDA Government, Yashwant Sinha had consulted the RSS before presenting the 1998 budget, but a sharp attack from the outfit later affected him so badly that he had decided to quit the post.

This has been stated candidly by Sinha in his upcoming book : "My Years as a Finance Minister -- Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer".

"I consulted RSS leaders before I finalised the 1998 budget. They expected me to prepare a Swadeshi budget," says Sinha noting that he had "happily and wholeheartedly" associated himself with the Swadeshi movement after joining the BJP.

Sinha says that before coming into government, RSS and BJP leaders used to meet regularly to discuss economic issues. "While we had a wide area of convergence, there were some issues on which we differed even then."

Stating that he had more than fair share of controversies, Sinha, who was Finance Minister for four years, says "Perhaps what was most distressing during my tenure in the Finance Ministry was the opposition I sometimes faced from my own colleagues within the party".

He says that Sushma Swaraj was one of the BJP's "more vocal and eloquent leaders" and a "great critic" of the economic policies of the government, in both the Parliamentary and party fora, during the period when "she was out of the Cabinet".

in the 252-page book, Sinha, whose tenure saw a series of controversies from the two UTI scams to the Flex industries case and the Mauritius tax treaty case in which he was alleged to have favoured his daughter-in-law, have also been dealt with.

He says that the statement of Dattopant Thengdi, one of the senior most leaders of the RSS, calling him an aparadhi (culprit) in a public meeting in Delhi and accusing him of deviating from the path of Swadeshi, affected me greatly.

I drafted a brief letter of resignation and was planning to go to the PM to hand it over when perchance I get age book, Sinha, whose tenure saw a series of controversies from the two UTI scams to the flex industries case and the Mau telephone call from L K Advani... Advani's pep talk made me give up the thought of resigning, he says.

He prefaced it saying that one reason for his unhappiness in the finance ministry was that I had lost the confidence of the swadeshi jagran manch and the RSS, with whom I had worked so closely earlier in the Swadeshi movement. There was a widening communication gap between them and us, he says.


Detailing the way he was targeted through various controversies, Sinha who shifted to the External Affairs in the middle of 2002, says that "perhaps if I wanted to survive in the Finance Ministry, I should have persuaded myself to do things differently".

"Perhaps a lot of people were glad that I had finally left the charge as Finance Minister. I do not know if I could have played the game differently, could have propitiated the powers that be in a different way. I am not merely referring to the powers that be in the party and in the government but to those out there in Mumbai and other places," he says.

He says when he shifted to the Ministry of External Affairs, "it dawned on me how my other colleagues had so much time for politics while I had had none at all as Finance Minister".

Dwelling on his relations with the BJP Parliamentary Party, Sinha recalls that the opposition to him was most pronounced in the BJP Parliamentary Party.

"The worst part was that these discussions did not remain confidential, they became public and were highlighted in the media and the impression gained ground that I did not enjoy confidence of the entire party," he says.

Since most MPs were concerned with sectional interest, they rarely saw the larger picture, Sinha says noting that "my compulsions on the fiscal frame were of little consequence to them. The maximum criticism was reserved for increases in subsidised prices".