BJP gave contracts worth Rs 4 lakh cr in exchange for Rs 2,000 cr electoral bonds: Cong

As grisly details of how the ruling BJP minted millions of rupees through electoral bonds continue to tumble out, the Congress party, on Saturday (March 23), demanded a Supreme Court-monitored SIT probe to "expose" what it termed a “mega scam masterminded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), whose chief Arvind Kejriwal is in the custody of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), claimed that the “only documentary evidence of money trail” in the alleged Delhi excise policy scam, for which the Delhi chief minister was arrested, leads to BJP. The AAP has demanded that the ED “must arrest BJP president JP Nadda immediately”.

Congress alleges '4 patterns of blatant corruption'

Congress’s communications chief Jairam Ramesh claimed that his party colleagues had co-related the electoral bond data, disclosed by the State Bank of India (SBI) under directions of the Supreme Court, and found that there were “four patterns of blatant corruption” by the BJP that emerged from their exercise.

Ramesh, who has been asserting for long that the electoral bond scheme was essentially a “chanda do, dhanda lo (donate to get business) scam”, alleged that the manner in which a large number of electoral bonds worth several crores of rupees were purchased by companies, several of them with dubious records, and redeemed by the BJP showed that the scheme was used by the Modi regime to receive “three different forms of bribe”.

The Congress leader claimed that the BJP government awarded contracts or project clearances collectively worth over Rs. 3.84 lakh crore in exchange for "bribes" that were paid to the saffron party through electoral bonds. Further, Ramesh alleged that “16 shell companies donated Rs 419 crore to the BJP” and that several of these shell companies were “on the Finance Ministry’s high-risk watch list for money laundering” or were either entities that purchased the bonds “within months of their formation” or those that donated in “many multiples of their paid-up share capital”.

“There are four categories that can be clearly seen here (in the BJP’s electoral bond receipts)… firstly, as we have been saying, Chanda Do, Dhanda Lo or Prepaid Bribe in which BJP received bonds worth crores from companies which were then awarded various infrastructure or other projects or given clearances for existing projects. Secondly, Theka Lo, Rishvat Do or Postpaid Bribe wherein contracts were awarded to companies which then paid bribes to the BJP in electoral bonds within three months of receiving project clearance. Thirdly, Hafta Vasooli or Post Raid Bribe which was nothing but an extortion racket run by the Modi government… companies that faced raids by the ED, CBI or IT department purchased bonds shortly after the raids and these were then redeemed by the BJP, and lastly, there is the category of shell companies that have donated to the BJP” Ramesh alleged.

'Postpaid bribe given to BJP'

The Congress has alleged that of the over Rs 6,065 crore in electoral bonds that the BJP received, a staggering Rs 2,004 crore was directly linked to 38 corporate groups that were granted 179 major contracts and project approvals either by the Modi government or by different BJP-ruled states. These 38 corporate groups, the Congress claims got projects and contracts “worth a total of Rs. 3.84 lakh crore in exchange for the Rs. 2,004 crore” they paid in electoral bonds to the BJP. Similarly, Ramesh said, “Rs. 62,000 crore worth of contracts or project approvals were given by the central or BJP-led state governments, for which Rs. 580 crore in Postpaid Bribe was given to the BJP, in electoral bonds, within three months of getting the contract or the project approval.”

The Congress also claimed that its team which co-related the electoral bonds data also came to the same conclusion which various independent research groups, journalists and public intellectuals probing the SBI disclosures as well as petitioners who had sought quashing of the Electoral Bond scheme in the Supreme Court revealed during a press conference at Delhi’s Press Club on Friday (March 22). Transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj, lawyer Prashant Bhushan, journalist Nitin Sethi and Jagdeep Chhokar, co-founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) which was the main petitioner in the electoral bonds case, had claimed on Friday that 41 corporate groups, which had faced raids by various central probe agencies, had purchased electoral bonds soon after they were raided and that these bonds were eventually redeemed by the BJP.

Terming this a clear case of extortion and branding the ED as Modi’s “Extortion Department”, Ramesh said, "These 41 corporate groups which faced a total of 56 raids by either the ED, the CBI or the I-T departments gave Rs. 2,592 crore to the BJP… the data we have co-related, so far, shows that of this amount, Rs. 1,853 crore was given to the BJP in electoral bonds after the raids.”

Delhi excise policy case

At their presser, Saurabh Bhardwaj had disclosed how companies owned by Sarath Chandra Reddy, who was arrested by the ED in November 2022 in connection with the alleged Delhi Excise Policy scam and later turned approver after claiming that he had paid bribes to the Delhi chief minister on behalf of the ‘South Lobby’, purchased electoral bonds eventually redeemed by the BJP shortly after Reddy’s arrest.

On Saturday, Delhi minister and AAP leader Atishi claimed the ED’s “entire case against Arvind Kejriwal is based on the so-called testimony of one man called Sarath Chandra Reddy… this man, when he was first questioned by the ED, had claimed he had never met Arvind Kejriwal following which the ED had arrested him… after spending some months in jail, Reddy changed his version and told the ED that he had not only met Kejriwal but also paid him money on behalf of the South Lobby; he was then made an approver and his was also a unique case wherein he applied for regular bail on grounds that he was suffering from lower back pain and he was given bail because the ED did not oppose it…”

“Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, we know that Reddy’s company Aurobindo Pharma and its subsidiaries bought electoral bonds worth Rs 50 crore after his arrest and these went to the BJP after which he was granted bail,” Atishi alleged.

The AAP leader, however, was only partially correct in her assertion. Bond records co-related by Bhardwaj, Bhushan and others show that while electoral bonds worth a total of Rs 34.5 crore purchased by Aurobindo Pharma were indeed encashed by the BJP, bonds worth Rs 15 crore and Rs 2.5 crore were also redeemed by K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s (KCR) Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and N. Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP), respectively. It may be recalled that Rao’s daughter and BRS leader K. Kavitha was also arrested by the ED earlier this month for her alleged role in the Delhi Excise Policy case.

AAP demands Nadda's arrest

Atishi, however, asserted that “while the ED has not been able show evidence of even a penny in the Excise Policy case being tracked back to Kejriwal or the AAP, SBI data clearly shows the only money trail in this case is between Sarath Reddy and the BJP… we demand that the ED must immediately arrest BJP president JP Nadda”. As per Bhardwaj, Aurobindo Pharma had purchased bonds worth Rs 5 crore in November 2022, shortly after Reddy was first arrested. These bonds were redeemed by the BJP as were bonds worth over Rs 25 crore purchased by the same company a year later, shortly before Reddy was released on bail.

While the AAP’s demand for Nadda’s arrest and an ED probe into the BJP’s accounts is not likely to be met as of now, the Congress has demanded that all “aspects of the electoral bond transactions must be investigated by an SIT set up and monitored by the Supreme Court”. Ramesh minced no words in asserting that his party “does not believe that an investigation by any central probe agency will reveal the truth about this mega scam because these agencies work directly under the BJP government and they will obviously not be able to conduct a fair probe”.

With Lok Sabha polls just days away, Ramesh also claimed that if the Opposition’s INDIA bloc comes to power, “not only will we have a probe in the electoral bonds scam but also into the PM-CARES Fund, which we believe will reveal a similar scam… we will also have a JPC investigation into Mo-dani (the party’s jibe at the alleged nexus between Modi and businessman Gautam Adani) industrialist, which this government has refused to order despite the Opposition’s consistent demand.”