Scrap electoral bonds immediately: Cong

NEWDELHI: The Congress on Monday alleged that the government overruled the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and introduced electoral bonds “to enable the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to amass black money”, and called for the immediate scrapping of the scheme.

Then finance minister, the late Arun Jaitley, announced the electoral bonds as a means of making donations to political parties in his budget speech in 2017. Electoral bonds were pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to parties and as a means of ensuring more transparency in political funding.

BJP leaders were unavailable for comment.

At a news conference on Monday, Congress leaders Rajeev Gowda and Pawan Khera cited media reports and responses to Right to Information applications to allege that the government had asked the RBI for its opinion just days before unveiling the electoral bonds, but promptly dismissed the central bank’s reservations and objections.

“It is a fraud on the people of India. It is a fraud on the electoral process. It eliminates the level playing field that needs to be there in a true democracy. It brings in opacity and this opacity was objected to by the Election Commission of India (ECI),” Gowda said.

He alleged that the government brought the scheme as a money bill so that changes cannot be made in it in the Rajya Sabha.

“These bonds have become a mechanism for converting black money to the bonds. The government went ahead with the scheme despite opposition from the RBI and the ECI,” Khera said.

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had earlier attacked the Centre, alleging that electoral bonds were “cleared by bypassing RBI” to help black money to enter the BJP coffers. “It appears that while the BJP was elected on the promise of eradicating black money it was busy lining .... its own pockets with exactly that! What a shameful betrayal of the Indian people,” she said on Twitter.

Describing it as “opaque” and promoting “money laundering”, the opposition party demanded that the names of those who bought these electoral bonds be made public. “The Congress party has opposed the electoral bond scheme because it lacks transparency,” Gowda said. He alleged that electoral bonds worth at least ~6,000 crore had been sold since March 2018 and the BJP had garnered over 95% of the funds while the Congress received ~500 crore of bonds.

These bonds, unlike debt instruments, resemble promissory notes, which allow donors to pay political parties with banks as an intermediary. Donors can buy the interest-free banking instruments and then transfers them to the account of a political party, where they are converted into donations.