Congress calls electoral bonds 'pre-paid, post-paid' bribe scheme

Amidst the heated debate surrounding 'who benefited the most from electoral bonds' and the subsequent sparring between political parties, the Congress reaffirmed its longstanding opposition to electoral bonds on Saturday, asserting that it has consistently opposed the opaque political funding system.

At a press conference in Delhi, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh emphasised, "The abolition of the electoral bonds scheme was a prominent pledge made by the Congress in the manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections."

Ramesh alleged that the State Bank of India (SBI) had sought to delay the release of electoral bonds under pressure from the Modi government. He added, "It took merely three lines of Python code and less than 15 seconds to correlate donors with political parties, thereby exposing the audacious and baseless assertion by SBI that fulfilling the Supreme Court's data request would require months."

"Out of the total Rs 543 crore donations by shell companies, the BJP alone received Rs 419 crore from 16 shell firms," Jairam disclosed.

Analysis of data released by the Election Commission of India indicates that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party received Rs 6,060 crore in electoral bonds since April 2019.

Among the 487 donors, the top 10 contributors alone contributed Rs 2,119 crore, constituting 35 per cent of the total funds received, marking the highest amount among all political parties.

The senior Congress leader also claimed that four patterns of blatant corruption were taking place under the electoral bonds schemes namely 1) pre-paid bribe 2) post-paid bribe 3) extortion and 4) shell companies.

Furthermore, he revealed that at least 41 corporate groups had undergone raids by investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and collectively donated over Rs 2,500 crores to the BJP. Of this amount, Rs 1,853 crores was contributed after searches conducted at their premises.