New Delhi, Sept. 6: Smriti Irani's tom-tomming of the work she has reportedly done for Gujarat as a Rajya Sabha MP has stumped her party.
Smriti, who left the HRD ministry in a blaze of controversy, has in a series of tweets catalogued everything she has purportedly done for Gujarat's Anand district, expending a bulk of the grants given under the MPLADS scheme.
In the introductory tweet, she says "Snapshot of the works done in Anand district in the year 2011-12" and goes on to itemise expenditures - spending over Rs 2.41 crore of the annual Rs 5 crore on welfare works that "benefited" more than three cities and towns and a hundred villages.
Now the Union textiles minister, Smriti's six-year Rajya Sabha term ends only in August 2017. While some in the BJP saw her tweets as the start of a "campaign to secure a second tenure", others wondered why she had "prematurely" embarked on such an exercise.
Besides, issues of "propriety" were flagged because "self-promotion" is not looked on too kindly by the BJP or the RSS unless it is related to promoting the government.
One of Smriti's colleagues said: "In the BJP, it is not the norm to publicise one's record as an MP on social media or in a public forum. There are subtler ways of doing the same thing."
The Rajya Sabha website offers MPs ample space under different heads to list their works - schemes undertaken, questions raised in the House and assurances given by the government, and special mentions, including state-specific ones, made.
The MPLADS site has information on how much money an MP spends each year but does not elaborate what it is spent on. Under the law, a member can use the funds only on public works.
Smriti said her "top priority" in Anand was "providing and conserving water along with ensuring clean surroundings". She counted the beautification of the Dhamraj lake and providing "quality" health care among her welfare and civic works. "It has been my privilege to have been able to reach out to the people of Anand & resolve their problems in whatever capacity I could," tweeted Smriti.
"I specially express my gratitude to people of Gujarat... In last five years as Rajya Sabha MP, I have been fortunate to have got immense support from @BJP4India leaders & people across the country."
The last tweet said: "On August 19, 2011, I got the opportunity to serve the nation in my capacity as Rajya Sabha member of Parliament from the Gujarat state."
Asked why the last post had a "goodbye" tinge, a BJP source from Gujarat said: "Everything's uncertain in the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah dispensation. Nobody knows where he or she stands a few months from now.
"Smriti was regarded as a close political associate of the Prime Minister but it turned out that she herself had no idea she was being moved out of HRD until it happened."
A decision on whether Smriti gets a second innings in the upper House may be a test case of her equation with Modi.
But some sources said a second term was a "given" for Smriti, although Arun Jaitley alone has the distinction of being a non-Gujarati to get more than a term from the state. Central minister Parshottam Rupala was the sole Gujarati to make the cut.
The first time Smriti provoked the BJP's ire was in April 2015.
The BJP's national executive was then in session for the first time under Shah's presidency in Bangalore. Shah had hoped his inaugural speech would hit the headlines. But Smriti stole the show by complaining to Goa police that she was allegedly filmed inside the trial room of a retail clothing chain in Panaji.
Shah had dropped Smriti from the national executive. Her BJP detractors interpreted the Goa episode as her way of getting back at him.
