No ticket to LS polls: BJP's ex-Union minister Harsh Vardhan quits

New Delhi: Former Union minister and BJP leader Harsh Vardhan quit politics on Sunday, allegedly after being denied a party ticket of BJP for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. He made the announcement through his X handle after Delhi BJP declared the names of candidates for its five constituencies, The Indian Expres reported.

Vardhan is a five-time MLA and two-time MP from Chandni Chowk, where BJP fielded Praveen Khandelwal this time. Vardhan, who had served as Union minister of health and as Union environment minister, said that he will resume his duties as an ENT surgeon at his clinic in East Delhi.

He posted on X, “After over thirty years of a glorious electoral career, during which I won all the five assembly and two parliamentary elections that I fought with exemplary margins, and held a multitude of prestigious positions in the party organisation and the governments at the state and centre I finally bowed out to return to my roots.”

He claimed that his motto has been helping the poor and the needy since his first day at his college, GSVM Medical College, Kanpur, where he studied MBBS. The RSS leadership then asked him to enter politics, he said.

Harshan Vardhan wrote, “A swayamsewak at heart, I have always been an ardent admirer of Deen Dayal Upadhyay ji’s Antodaya philosophy of striving to serve the last man in the queue. It was at the insistence of the then RSS leadership that I jumped into the electoral fray. They could convince me only because for me politics meant the opportunity to fight our three main enemies – poverty, disease and ignorance.”