New Delhi: As many as 38 corporate groups that secured government projects and contracts worth an estimated Rs 3.8 lakh crore had donated electoral bonds worth Rs 2,004 crore to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress has alleged. It cited approvals for 179 contracts and projects given to these companies either by the central or state BJP governments to support its claim.
The Congress party has now demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the electoral bonds scheme by a Special Investigation Team (SIT).
“The matched database of the electoral bond donors and the recipients, when combined with publicly available information on contracts, project clearances, raids and other similar events, prima facie paints a clear and sordid picture of legalisation of corruption,” Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh said Saturday.
He added that the “opaque (electoral bonds) scheme ensured that prepaid bribes, postpaid bribes and even post-raid bribes could now be routed through the banking channel as electoral bonds”.
Speaking on behalf of the Congress party, Ramesh alleged that at least four patterns have emerged of “blatant corruption” in the electoral bonds scheme: “Chanda Do, Dhanda Lo i.e. Prepaid Bribe”, “Theka Lo, Rishvat Do i.e. Postpaid Bribe”, “Hafta Vasooli i.e. Extortion / Post-raid Bribe” and “Farzi Company i.e. Shell Companies”.
“The publication of the electoral bonds data, thanks to the Supreme Court, has now allowed citizens to put numbers to all these four categories,” he added.
*4 Lakh Crore, Bik Gaye Yeh Log*
For the past month, the State Bank of India has desperately attempted to delay the release of the Electoral Bonds data until June 30, 2024 – after the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections. This was most certainly done at the behest of the Modi government.… pic.twitter.com/a8JJaOhWJF
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) March 23, 2024
According to the Congress, data compiled by the State Bank of India (SBI) and released at the directions of the Supreme Court by the Election Commission (ECI) suggests that “Rs 551 crore in donations were given to the BJP in exchange for Rs 1.32 lakh crore in contracts/project approvals that were given by Central or BJP state governments within 3 months after the donation”.
It went on to add that “Rs 62,000 crore in contracts/project approvals were given by Central or BJP state governments, for which Rs 580 crores in Postpaid Bribe (in the form of electoral bonds) were given to the BJP within 3 months after approval/contract”.
The Congress party also said that “41 corporate groups have faced a total of 56 ED/CBI/IT raids and have given Rs 2,592 crore to the BJP, of which Rs 1,853 crore was given after the raids”.
Further, it claimed that 16 shell companies donated electoral bonds worth Rs 543 crore, of which the BJP received electoral bonds worth Rs 419 crore.
“These included companies on a finance ministry high risk watch list for money laundering, companies donating crores within months of their formation, and companies donating many multiples of their paid-up share capital,” said the Congress.
During a press conference Saturday, Ramesh also criticised the SBI, which had demanded time till 30 June to release the electoral bonds data. “The SBI said it would take months to do it, and tried to postpone the full data disclosure until after the election. It took our team three lines of Python code and less than 15 seconds,” he said.
The “electoral bonds scam” will be investigated if the INDIA bloc comes to power after the Lok Sabha elections, he added.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)