NEW DELHI, 23 Mar: The Congress on Saturday reiterated its demand for a Supreme Court-monitored SIT probe into the electoral bonds (EB) issue, alleging that the “opaque scheme” ensured that prepaid, postpaid and even post-raid bribes could be routed through the banking channel.
At a press conference, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging that the person who gave a guarantee of ‘bringing back black money’, instead “legalised corruption and is desperately trying to hide it.”
The opposition party also released a “python code,” due to which, it claimed, it took less than 15 seconds to match the donors with political parties, “exposing the brazen and ridiculous claim of the SBI that it would take months to provide the data asked by the Supreme Court.”
The Congress has highlighted four patterns of “blatant corruption” in the “electoral bonds scam – chanda do, dhanda lo, ie, [repaid bribe; ‘theka lo, rishvat do, ie, postpaid bribe; hafta vasooli, ie, extortion/post-raid bribe; farzi company, ie, shell companies,” he said.
Ramesh alleged that the analysis using the code has brought to light that 38 corporate groups which have got 179 major contracts and projects approvals from the central or BJP state governments have donated electoral bonds.
These companies have got a total worth of Rs 3.8 lakh crore in projects and contracts, in exchange for Rs 2,004 crore in electoral bonds donations to the BJP, Ramesh claimed.
He said that there are two categories under this are prepaid bribe and post paid bribes.
“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 three months after the donation,” he alleged.
Ramesh further claimed that Rs 62,000 crore in contracts/project approvals were given by central or BJP state governments, for which Rs 580 crore of postpaid bribe in the form of electoral bonds to the BJP within three months after approval/contract.
He asserted that “when the INDIA bloc comes to power, it would get the electoral bond scam investigated by an SIT.”
He said also that JPC would be formed over the Adani matter and an SIT would also look into the PM-CARES Fund, if the INDIA bloc is voted to power in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Ramesh alleged 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 raids.
He also alleged that 16 shell companies donated Rs 419 crore to the BJP, out of 543 crore donated by shell companies in total.
“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,” he said.
“We have assembled a complete, verified database of hundreds of contracts, project clearances, ED/IT/CBI raids, and shell companies, all carefully mapped to the database of BJP’s electoral bond donors,” Ramesh said.
The State Bank of India (SBI) stated that it would take months to do it, and tried to postpone the full data disclosure until after the election, while it took our team three lines of Python code and less than fifteen seconds, Ramesh said.
Following a Supreme Court directive, the SBI, which was the authorised seller of electoral bonds, shared the data with the poll panel on 12 March. The top court had given the Election Commission time till 5 pm on 15 March to upload the data on its website.
The SBI said that a total of 22,217 electoral bonds of varying denominations were purchased by donors between 1 April, 2019 and 15 February this year, out of which 22,030 were redeemed by political parties.
In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court scrapped the electoral bonds scheme, calling it “unconstitutional,” and ordered the release of all details related to the bonds purchased and redeemed. (PTI)