New Delhi, Mar 23 (UNI) The Indian National Congress (INC) again attacked the BJP-led government over the electoral bonds issue on Saturday and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has 'legalised corruption with electoral bonds' and demanded a 'Supreme Court monitored inquiry' into it.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here on Saturday, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh stressed that, 'Congress is not against private investment and we are not targeting private companies. For the country's GDP, we need private investment and there cannot be economic development without private investment. But the Modi government has used private companies through electoral bonds."
While calling the electoral bonds issue a 'scam', the Rajya Sabha MP reiterated that the government was following four patterns of corruption through the electoral bonds.
He said that the four patterns are "Chanda do, Dhanda Lo ie Prepaid bribe; Theka Lo, Rishvat Do ie Postpaid Bribe; Hafta Vasooli ie Extortion and Farzi Company ie Shell Companies."
He termed the SBI's claim that it needed time till June 30 to release the electoral bonds data as "ridiculous", Ramesh said that their two young friends took "just 15 seconds and three lines of Python code to match the donors with the political parties."
Ramesh alleged, "Thirty eight corporate groups have got 179 major contracts, especially infrastructure projects, and have donated electoral bonds. These companies have got Rs 3.8 lakh crore in projects in exchange for Rs 2,004 crore in electoral bond donations to the BJP."
Talking about the "shell companies," the Congress leader said that the Prime Minister who spoke against the shell companies has Rs 419 crore donated to his party out of Rs 543 crore by 16 such companies.
He also claimed that "Forty one corporate groups have faced 56 ED/CBI/IT raids and have given Rs 2,592 crore to the BJP, of which Rs 1,853 crore was given after the raid.
Ramesh further claimed that the party had assembled a complete, verified database of hundreds of contracts, project clearances, ED/IT/CBI raids, and shell companies, all carefully mapped to the database of the BJP's electoral bond donors.
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