“Unka Sankalp, Vipareet Bharat” “Sab ka naash, Sab ka Vinaash”

April 02, 2024

By Aravind Bhatikar

IT is by now common knowledge that the very purpose of the Electoral Bonds Scheme was to collect funds secretly for the BJP from corporate and shell companies under the garb of a scheme approved by the Parliament. The very fact that the scheme was introduced as a part of a Money Bill in 2017 had caused concern about the morality of the procedure. That was followed later by an amendment to the Companies Act which removed restrictions contained in the act on the amount that could be donated to political parties by companies. Under the Pre-Amendment provisions of the Companies Act, companies could donate to political parties up to seven-and-a-half percent of their average net profit for the previous three years. The amendment passed by the Parliament in 2017-2018 removed this limit.
The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) challenged the amendments to the Electoral Bonds Scheme in 2018 itself, but the Supreme Court refused to stay the operation of the scheme in spite of several hearings that took place till 2021.
The desperate plea of the State Bank of India asking for time up to June 30, 2024 for releasing all information relating to the electoral bonds scheme was itself a proof that the government did not want information on the electoral bonds to be in public domain before the Lok Sabha elections 2024. The last minute move by Indian corporates to get an order from the Supreme Court against release of the confidential information on their donations was further proof that neither the government nor the corporates wanted the “aam aadmi” in India to know their secret deals.
Were it not for the firm directions of the Supreme Court, the murky, improper and illegal deals between the Modi government and corporate, would never have come to light. The Electoral Bonds Scheme was a clever instrument which enabled the Bharatiya Janata Party to receive donations as quid pro quo from political parties for favors received from the Modi government.
It is widely estimated that the Modi government dished out schemes and projects worth about Rs4 lakh crore to corporates against exchange of electoral bond “donations” worth Rs8,200 crore which was more than 50% of the total donations received by all political parties through electoral bonds.
Two blatant examples of how the electoral bonds scheme was an integral part of political or administrative manipulation resorted to by the BJP’s Narendra Modi government are the so called excise scam of the Aam Aadmi party government in Delhi and the spectrum license issued to Bharti in 2023-24.
Sarath Chandra Reddy, the boss of Aurobindo Pharma Group was summoned by the ED for questioning about his role in the so called excise scam of the Delhi government. Sarath Chandra Reddy denied any mala fide action either by Arvind Kejriwal or by him in the so called scam. Subsequently, Reddy was arrested and jailed by the ED. While Reddy was in jail for a few months, his company Aurobindo Pharma Group donated Rs55 crore through electoral bonds to the BJP. Before that Reddy’s bail application was opposed by the ED. After the donation, Reddy applied for bail again and was granted bail since this time the ED did not oppose the bail.
Reddy then turned approver and gave statements to the ED against Arvind Kejriwal. Kejriwal’s arrest was based on the statements of Sarath Chandra Reddy and another witness from Andhra which followed almost the same pattern as that of Reddy.
The spectrum license reportedly issued to a Bharti company, followed enactment of an act which enabled government to issue spectrum license without calling for tenders. An amount of Rs236 crore was donated to BJP through electoral bonds by companies belonging to the Bharti group around the time the licensing process was on. In 2012, 122 spectrum licenses which were issued by the then UPA government without calling for tenders, were cancelled by the Supreme Court. The donation of Rs236 crore by way of electoral bonds would never have come to light if the State Bank of India was not compelled by the Supreme Court to release the information to the ECI and eventually to the people of India through the ECI websites.