Full of lies: Cong on PM’s response over electoral bonds issue
NEW DELHI: The Congress on Monday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his remarks on the electoral bonds issue, claiming that while the corruption of his government had been known for a while, the setback is that there are now hard numbers to prove it.
Prime Minister Modi on Sunday rejected the suggestion that the electoral bond issue caused a setback to his government, saying no system is perfect and any shortcoming could be improved upon.
In an interview with Thanthi TV, he also said those who are dancing over the matter will repent it. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh attacked Modi over his remarks and charged, “Every single day the prime minister scales new heights of hypocrisy and plumbs new depths of dishonesty”.
“The prime minister has fully lied to the nation in his latest interview to a Tamil television channel. He claims that ‘where funds have come from, how they are being used’ is only known due to the Electoral Bond Scheme instituted by him,” Ramesh said and put forward relevant facts. “The Electoral Bond Scheme was designed to be fully anonymous. In other words, Modi wanted to hide from the public the details of ‘where funds have come from, and how they are being used,” he alleged. For six years, between 2018 and 2024, not a single detail of which party got funds from which donor was revealed to the public, Ramesh said in a post on X.
“As for the PM’s question of ‘what have I done that I should face a setback (due to Electoral Bonds)?’ Mr Modi, the data has revealed your party and Government’s monumental corruption,” Ramesh alleged. He claimed that “Rs. 4 lakh crores worth of contracts, projects, and environmental clearances can be linked to thousands of crores in electoral bond donations made by corporate donors to your party. The Government of India has been reduced to a supermarket - ‘Chanda Do, Dhanda Lo’.” “At least 40 ED/ IT/CBI raids on firms have been followed by hefty electoral bond donations by these firms to the BJP. The prime minister and his cronies have been engaged in a systematic extortion,” Ramesh alleged.