NEW DELHI, Mar 15:
The Congress on Friday demanded a high-level probe by the Supreme Court against the ruling BJP and freezing of its bank accounts for alleged corruption in the electoral bonds scheme, as it claimed the party got 50 per cent of the money received through these bonds.
The opposition party alleged that the electoral bonds data has exposed the “corrupt tactics” of the BJP such as “quid pro quo,” grant of “protection” to companies against donations, accepting “kickbacks,” and money laundering through shell companies.
A day after data pertaining to electoral bonds scheme was made public following Supreme Court directions, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge took a swipe at the BJP, saying, “PM Modi says ‘Na khaunga, na khane doonga’, but it seems that he only meant ‘Sirf BJP ko khilaunga’.”
In a post on X, he said the data released by State Bank of India shows BJP got nearly 50 per cent of the total electoral bonds money, while the principal opposition party, Indian National Congress got only 11 per cent of the funds.
“There are many dubious donors. Who are these people? Which companies are these? Why have so many companies donated only after ED, IT and CBI raids? Who exerted the pressure on such companies,” he asked.
“We demand the highest level of enquiry by the Supreme Court to investigate this saga of corruption by the BJP,” the Congress chief said in his post.
Kharge said it is quite worrying that while the bank accounts of the Congress party were frozen, no action has been taken against the BJP which has “illegally acquired” hundreds of crores of money.
“Therefore, along with an enquiry, we demand that the Bank Accounts of BJP should be frozen with immediate effect due to the illegal nature of the funds received through the Electoral Bonds Scheme,” Kharge said.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh hit back also at Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for her reported remarks that the link between the ED/CBI/IT raids on firms and donations through electoral bonds were based on “assumptions,” saying: “We invite her to release the full data of who donated how much to which political party.”
The Congress also demands the unique bond ID numbers, so that it can precisely match donors to recipients, Ramesh said.
“Soon this Suit-Boot-Loot-Jhooth Sarkar will have nowhere to hide!” he said.
His remarks came a day after the Election Commission (EC) published the electoral bonds data on its website.
Ramesh also put out on X a “quick first analysis” of the electoral bonds data that the SBI disclosed to the EC after weeks of “attempting to postpone it until after the election.”
“Over 1,300 companies and individuals have donated electoral bonds, including over 6,000 crore to the BJP since 2019,” he said.(PTI)
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