Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal on Saturday hit out at the BJP-led government over the electoral bonds issue, alleging the ‘Modi Ki Guarantee’ is that the BJP does campaigning with “illegal money” raised through the scheme while the probe agencies “sleep”. Sibal, a senior advocate who is leading the arguments for the petitioners in a case in the Supreme Court against electoral bonds, claimed at a press conference here that 33 loss-making firms donated electoral bonds worth about Rs 581 crore with Rs 434 crore going to the BJP.
He said the Supreme Court’s verdict on electoral bonds has made it clear that the money the BJP and other parties had was illegal.
“If this money in the hands of the BJP is illegal, I want to ask the BJP did you get any Income Tax notice? I want to ask the Income Tax Department – did you send any notice to BJP? I want to ask the ED – did you conduct any raid?” Sibal said. “You have frozen the account of the Congress party, but you (BJP) got about Rs 6,655 crore, were your accounts frozen?” he added.
Escalating his attack on the BJP, Sibal said, “You did not do it. Neither the IT department sent notice nor ED raids were carried out and the CBI also did not register an FIR.”
“So on one hand the Congress’ accounts are frozen, but since the ED, CBI and IT department are yours (BJP’s), you don’t get any notice or face raids,” he added. The Congress leader claimed that 33 loss-making firms donated electoral bonds worth Rs 582 crore with 434 crore going to the BJP. The IT department knows it so there should be raids. The ED should have reached there and the CBI should have registered an FIR but nothing happened, he said.
Sibal also claimed that Rs 2,717 crore was donated through electoral bonds by firms whose capital was lower than its donations.
“The BJP is also safe, companies are also safe. The ED, IT department and CBI are sleeping and the BJP is doing campaigning with that money, this is ‘Modi ki Guarantee’,” Sibal said.
“The guarantee is that no action will be taken as the ED, CBI and ED is theirs,” he added.
Sibal also questioned RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and asked why is he silent on the issue.
“I also want to ask (RSS chief) Mohan Bhagwat ji, you say that you are not in politics at all, you think about the country but since this decision on electoral bonds has come, Mohan Bhagwat ji did not say anything, he is also silent. He should say that the decision of Modi’s government was wrong,” he said.
On February 15, a five-judge Constitution bench scrapped the Centre’s electoral bonds scheme of anonymous political funding, calling it “unconstitutional” and ordering disclosure by the Election Commission of the donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients by March 13.
Subsequently, the electoral bands has been made public.
The SBI has said that a total of 22,217 electoral bonds of varying denominations were purchased by donors between April 1, 2019, and February 15 this year, out of which 22,030 were redeemed by the political parties.