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‘He fully lied to nation’: Congress reacts to PM Modi's statement on electoral bonds
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in an interview with Tamil Nadu's Thanthi TV, broke his silence on the now-scrapped electoral bonds scheme.
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence on the now-scrapped electoral bonds scheme, Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh on Monday accused him of ‘fully lying to the nation.’
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PM Modi spoke on the issue in an interview with Tamil Nadu's Thanthi TV. The interview was released on Sunday.
“Every single day, the Prime Minister scales new heights of hypocrisy, and plumbs new depths of dishonesty. 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 wrote in a long post on X (previously Twitter).
Ramesh, the Congress' general secretary in-charge for communications, then presented some ‘relevant facts.’
“The 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 (to political parties),” the Rajya Sabha MP wrote, adding that for six years, from 2018 to 2024, no detail of which party got funds from which donor was revealed to the public.
Electoral bonds were introduced by the Modi government in January 2018. In February 2024, the Supreme Court called the scheme ‘unconstitutional’ and scrapped it. The apex court also directed the State Bank of India (SBI), which sold electoral bonds to donors, to share all details with the Election Commission of India (ECI). On directions of the Supreme Court, the ECI uploaded the data on the poll panel's website.
Ramesh, in his post, accused the ‘remote-controlled’ SBI of ‘lying’ to the court.
“The SBI was lying in the Supreme Court when it demanded a 3-month extension to match donor data with the political parties. It took our team five lines of Python code and less than fifteen seconds to match each donor with the political party they donated to,” he posted.
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The Congress leader also reacted to the PM denying that the ruling BJP would see a setback due to electoral bonds, and reiterated allegations of ‘quid pro quo’ between the ruling party and its donors. With donations worth over ₹8000 crore, the BJP was by far the biggest beneficiary.
He stated: “The data has revealed your party and government’s monumental corruption. The corruption was known for a while; the setback is that there are now hard numbers to prove it.”
