Cong alleges black money routed to BJP’s accounts

New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday charged the government with engaging in “quid pro quo” for receiving electoral bonds and “conspiring” to route black money into the BJP’s accounts through the scheme.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were answerable on the electoral bond “scam”. He also accused the ruling party of indulging in “tax terrorism” and “surgical strikes” on the Congress after its accounts were frozen by the Income Tax authorities ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

The opposition party also hoped the Election Commission would maintain “total impartiality and neutrality” during polls and would live up to its constitutional duties as expected by the people from it.

Addressing a press conference, Ramesh alleged that the electoral bonds scheme introduced in 2018 was the “biggest extortion racket” ever run by the government, after it was revealed that the BJP garnered around Rs 6,800 crore through electoral bonds while the Congress received over Rs 1300 crore worth of bonds.

Ramesh claimed that 19 companies that were marked ‘high risk’ by the Ministry of Finance for violating rules under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in 2018 have collectively purchased electoral bonds for a whopping Rs 2,717 crore. “As many as 18 of these 19 companies that had bought electoral bonds did not appear in the subsequent annual lists of ‘high risk’ companies. Were they removed from the list because of their contribution to the ruling party’s coffers,” he asked.

Dismissing the Home Minister’s contention that the Congress also got donations, he pointed out that the CBI, ED or the Income Tax were not under the control of the Congress and nor did it have the authority to award big contracts like those of ports, highways and power projects.

“The prime minister promised to deposit 15 lakhs in each Indian’s account by recovering black money from overseas. It appears the Prime Minister has conspired to route all the black money into the BJP’s accounts instead,” Ramesh said in a post on X.

He alleged big companies were made to pay hefty donations to the BJP to get big contracts later, while several companies were “forced” to pay up after probe agencies like the ED, the Income

Tax and the CBI were let loose on them.