Sushma Swaraj in New Delhi on Monday. (PTI)

New Delhi, Sept. 6: She had vowed to shave her head in protest if Sonia Gandhi became Prime Minister. But Sushma Swaraj today claimed she cared not a whit about power for herself, or about its trappings like flashing read beacons.

Not even about being declared the party’s candidate for Prime Minister.

“I am not L.K. Advani,” she said by way of explanation, aiming a dart at her onetime mentor.

The question she had been asked during a chat with journalists was: did her position as Lok Sabha Opposition leader grant her the status of shadow Prime Minister?

The allusion in her response was to how Advani had forced the BJP’s hand by telling an interviewer in 2006 that he considered himself the shadow Prime Minister.

“It’s the party that decides on such matters. Being the Opposition leader doesn’t automatically mean being a shadow PM. It may be the case in the Westminster system but we don’t follow that model strictly, because it also has a convention of constituting a shadow cabinet. Besides, I am not L.K. Advani,” she said.

Sushma continued: “I never thought of myself as a PM candidate, just like I never imagined I would become the Opposition leader or the Delhi chief minister. I am a devotee of Krishna and take blessings and setbacks as they come. If I am blessed with something, I place my gratitude at his feet; if I suffer a defeat, then too I fall at his feet.”

But she had not forgotten how she was temporarily relegated to the fringes during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure.

“Please remember that after I fought a glorious battle in Bellary (against Sonia Gandhi in 1999), I was not taken in the (Vajpayee) cabinet for two years,” she said. “Yet I never carped, privately or on record.”

It’s anyone’s guess if the 1999 defeat to Sonia rankled too. In May 2004, Sushma almost failed to keep her hair on as the possibility of Sonia becoming Prime Minister grew. She was spared the sacrifice of tonsuring herself because the Congress president picked Manmohan Singh to head the government.

To showcase her “distaste” for the frills of power, Sushma said she hated travelling in official cars fitted with red lights.

“I did have to use one when I was the chief minister and later a cabinet minister. I have one such car now but the light is never switched on.”

She answered a question about her links with the controversial, mine-owning Reddy brothers of Bellary, Karnataka, with a straight face.

“Why do you talk of their connection with the BJP leadership? Say straight out that I am their patron,” she told the questioner.

She explained that her only reason for patronising the three Reddys — who have held Karnataka’s BJP government hostage several times —was that they had “snatched” Bellary from the Congress.

“I breached the Congress bastion (in 1999). Sonia won, so the battle was not over for the BJP. But the Reddy brothers completed my task for me. In the 11 years I have known them, I have not taken even 11 paise from them. That’s why I have the moral authority to tell them not to do anything to our government, and they listen to me,” Sushma said.