After the pro-Bharatiya Janata Party lawyers’ letter to the Chief Justice of India was released, Prime Minister Narendra Modi endorsed their cause on X (formerly Twitter). But he has maintained something of a silence over the electoral bonds scam – independent India’s biggest ghotala.
The first signs of the scam surfaced two months ago, on February 21, when a news portal revealed that 30 firms that had donated nearly Rs 335 crore to the BJP between FYs 2018-19 and 2022-23 had faced the wrath of the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax department.
Since then, Modi has been largely keeping maun (silent) on the bonds scam – as he did on Hindenburg’s allegations against Adani, Brij Bhushan’s antics, China’s border violations and the Manipur violence. The exception was when he said that it was because of the scheme that a money trail can be established.
Remember Modi’s jibes at his predecessor ‘maun’ Mohan Singh? Last month, the PM had repeatedly harped on Congress’s corruption.
But as compared to the bonds scam involving thousands of crores, the Bofors scam of the Congress amounted to a pittance – Rs 64 crore, according to Business Standard.
The startling facts brought out by the electoral bonds figures have made it the mother of all scams – both in volume as well as its intricate design to conceal the truth. As more and more revelations came out, Modi claimed the scheme was qualitatively better than the earlier system for it enabled the tracing of donors.
This is patent misrepresentation. Facts on record show that the whole scheme was designed to conceal who paid whom.
When the Supreme Court ordered the State Bank of India to reveal the details around bonds purchased since 2019, its chairman said the bank needed time up to June to collate the data.
When the court insisted, it revealed the details but withheld the vital alphanumeric numbers that would enable donors to be matched with recipient parties. The concealed numbers were provided after another court direction, and the disclosures were really startling.
Contrary to what Modi said in the TV interview, the bonds scheme has inbuilt features for extortion and quid pro quo services and arrangements that a Congress spokesperson characterised as ‘chanda de, dhandha le (give donations, take business)’.
ED and I-T department officials forced even the loss-making and new firms to donate huge amounts to the BJP. Also, green approvals and project sanctions were leveraged to intimidate companies. Consider the details:
- Apparently as quid pro quo, a number of companies donated a total of Rs 1,698 crore to the BJP after being raided by Union government agencies.
- Navayuga Engineering, which has been incurring losses and is building the Silkyara tunnel where workers were trapped last year, donated all of its bonds worth Rs 55 crore to the BJP.
- The MKJ Group – when it made a profit worth just Rs 5.03 crore in FY 2019 – donated Rs 14.4 crore to the BJP that same financial year.
- West Bengal based Keventer Foodpark Infra donated over 150 times its profit to buy bonds in 2019-20. The bulk of these went to the BJP.
- At least 11 construction or infrastructure companies, among the biggest purchasers of bonds, bought Rs 506 crore, mostly through their lesser-known subsidiaries. This was close on the heels of raids or regulatory action by Union government agencies. Among the donors were big and small companies.
- At least six pharmaceutical firms that faced scrutiny from investigative or regulatory agencies purchased bonds.
- About 43 firms incorporated in or after 2018 bought bonds worth over Rs 384.5 crore. Four of them purchased bonds worth crores within months of getting established in 2023.
- Now we are told that the Modi-Shah or ‘MoSha’ regime has also used green approvals as a lever to bag electoral bonds. Some of the biggest donors of bonds to the ruling party were engaged in mining and infrastructure.
- Megha Engineering is the second biggest buyer of bonds, spending Rs 966 crore. The company bought a number of bonds close to the date of bagging crucial contracts.
- Mining major Vedanta, which has been pulled up for several environmental violations across many of its oil and gas projects in India, purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 400.65 crore between April 2019 and February this year.
- Days after the approval of a major project in Rajasthan in 2022, Vedanta donated Rs 100 crore to the BJP.
Since I wrote on The Wire that the opposition has to be ready to face the ED and CBI, in February, things have moved rather fast towards what political scientist Suhas Palshikar has called an ‘opposition-mukt election.’ He describes the unfolding political scenario as a ‘mockery of democracy’.
Also read: Let Us Open Our Eyes Or Else India Will No Longer Have Government By, Of the People
Look at the widening range of tasks assigned to the enforcement agencies – to force businesses to donate to the ruling party through bonds or what the opposition calls ‘post-raid checks’, to freeze the bank accounts of political parties, to force individuals to defect to the BJP, and now to seize the movement of funds during elections.
More startlingly, for the first time, the Election Commission has engaged the ED to crack down on the use of cash, freebies and liquor during the elections. It will be a ground mop-up operation by the ED and as many as 20 other agencies, including the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, The Telegraph reported.
With the ED’s reputation as the ruling party’s war horse, the opposition fears that its new power would be selectively used to target their field workers.
Such large-scale search, seizure and detention will greatly hamper the already fund-starved opposition’s work. This had been experimented on during the last assembly elections, when Rs 1,760 crore, was seized in similar raids. With the ED and other agencies at helm, it is going to be more elaborate and ruthless.
We had earlier discussed the role of the agencies in inducing defections using the now-normal raids on and arrests of opposition leaders. Consider the long list of leaders who have recently defected to the BJP and thus became ‘clean’ gentlemen.
Last month, a CBI case against Praful Patel was dropped.
Twenty-three of 25 senior opposition leaders who defected to the BJP have got reprieve. Among them are Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, Ashok Chavan, Suvendu Adhikari, Narayan Rane, Amarinder Singh, Digambar Kamath, Prema Khandu, Ajit Pawar, Chagan Bhujbal and Bhavana Gawli.
Those like Mayawati did not defect to the ruling party but got herself rid of old cases by remaining low-key. She is now helping the BJP cut into the opposition votes. The Telugu Desam Party’s Chandrababu Naidu and the Gowdas of the Janata Dal (Secular) can get protection from ED/CBI raids so long as they remain with the BJP. Tax and ED officials will not dare to touch them.
Under the Narendra Modi government, the ED has been granted extraordinary powers through amendments to the PMLA. Photo: Screenshot from Google Street View.
In his one of the rare remarks on the ED’s operations, Modi himself lauded the actions by the enforcement agencies. He said: ‘Jo khayega, vo jail jayega’.
Reeling under the combined onslaught by the enforcement agencies, the opposition has made a fairly reasonable demand to the chief election commissioner: that the agencies’ raids or arrests should have to be vetted by the election commission or a designated committee.
Late last year, Jairam Ramesh they also sought the introduction of a system to verify the voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips. A few days later, in his reply, the chief election commissioner merely repeated same points and asserted ‘full faith’ in the EVMs. The issue has now reached the Supreme Court.
The chief election commissioner is not likely to act on the demand to suspend the operations of investigative agencies against political activists. This is because the onslaught by these agencies is an important component of the political leadership’s winning strategy.
One of Amit Shah’s early actions after becoming home minister in 2019 was to weaponise the investigating agencies against the opposition.
For this, section 45 of the PMLA was amended to give draconian powers to the ED.
The section empowered the ED officials to summon, arrest, raid and attach property against the political rivals at will. It shifted the burden of proving innocence on the accused rather than prosecution.
Even if the charges are utterly false, the ED officials could endlessly drag the victims to the court and shut in jail for unlimited period.
The section is being also being used to induce small parties into alliances and to tame sidelined BJP leaders like Vasundhara Raje Scindia. Therefore, the moment those like Chandrababu leave the alliance, they will lose the protection from enforcement agencies’ harassment.
Also read: How the Enforcement Directorate Has Become an Excessive Directorate
According to the Association for Democratic Reforms, 139 BJP MPs had self-declared criminal cases against them as of October last year. These are self-declared criminal cases. The ED could dig up any number of evidence against any politician, whether belonging to the BJP or the opposition.
As the election campaign begins, MoSha’s tricks department has begun resorting to new tools to disrupt the opposition’s campaign. Beginning with the main opposition party, the IT authorities froze its bank accounts and seized Rs 135 crore. This was followed by three more notices in quick succession. The total amount demanded was Rs 3,567 crore.
This had never happened in India. The Congress has asked why the regime did not similarly act against the BJP for a pending penalty of Rs 4,600 crore.
This was quickly followed by similar notices to the CPI for Rs 11 crore. The CPI(M) is fighting an earlier demand for Rs 15.59 crore.
As a result, the Congress is finding it hard to run its campaign. The Election Commission’s order to seize funds at the ground level would cripple the opposition’s work.
India had never faced such a contentious election with the opposition being denied a level playing ground. Without prompt judicial intervention, the 29th general election will slide to the level of those in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
P. Raman is a veteran journalist.
