NEW DELHI, 22 Feb: The Congress on Thursday accused the Narendra Modi government of capturing democracy through extortion and financial terrorism, and claimed that at least 30 firms donated huge sums to the BJP following raids by probe agencies such as the CBI, the ED and the income tax department.
The Congress cited news reports claiming that these firms donated as much as Rs 335 crore to the BJP after actions by probe agencies against them. And 23 of these companies did not make any donation to the BJP between 2014 and the year of the raids, the report stated.
“An autocratic Modi government is capturing democracy through extortion and financial terrorism,” Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said.
He claimed that the BJP received donations from at least 30 firms after it “misused” the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the I-T department for raids against them.
Reports also show that some of these firms handed out a heftier amount to the BJP in the months following the searches, Kharge claimed.
“On one hand, the Modi government wants to steal the hard-earned money of people donated to the Congress party in good faith, and on the other hand it threatens corporate firms through ED, CBI, I-T, etc, to grab lion’s share of donations!
“Looting opposition and blackmailing donors to fill BJP’s coffers is a dark phase for our democracy! We shall fight this tooth and nail – both in the court of law and in the court of the people,” he said.
At a press conference, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the Narendra Modi government put the I-T department and other agencies after 30 companies, forcing them to donate Rs 335 crore to the BJP.
This, he said, has been done in the last two to three years.
In a post on X, Ramesh alleged, “Dhanda ek ko, chanda sab se! (business to one, donations from all).”
“Dr Manmohan Singh gave Indian citizens a unique ID through Aadhaar. Narendra Modi has given corporate India a new ID: investigate-donate,” he said.
“From the ashes of I-T and ED, MoShah have innovated this new I-D model: investigate, then get them to donate,” he alleged, in a swipe at Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.
Electoral trusts and conventional political party donations allow some degree of transparency into campaign financing, he said, claiming that it enables public disclosure of who funds which political party.
“Modi’s pet project of electoral bonds did away with all transparency – the media cannot conduct such an investigation on the electoral bonds. It’s clear why: they don’t want people to have insight into the Pradhaan Mantri Chanda Vasuli Yojana.
“The only reason that we have any data at all is because the electoral bonds are only open in a few 15-day windows every year, and because the investigated businesses are desperate to make donations and appease MoShah instantaneously,” he alleged.
The Congress leader said that putting these latest revelations in the perspective of recent developments, key questions emerge: “BJP got the majority (around 60 percent) of its declared campaign funds from electoral bonds. Currently we have no data on where the BJP got its chanda from. When, as per the SC judgment last week, the electoral bonds data is released, how much more evidence of the I-D model can we expect to find?”
“The prime minister’s 2014 campaign promise was incomplete. It was always, ‘Na khaunga, na khaane dunga, par zabardasti chanda jama karunga’,” Ramesh alleged in his post. (PTI)