This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
By now we know Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not like to respond to inconvenient truths which can dent his image. He took one and a half months to offer his first response to the Supreme Court judgement declaring the electoral bonds scheme illegal and unconstitutional.
As expected, he gave an astounding spin of his own by suggesting at a public meeting that “now at least everyone knows who is paying money and who is receiving it” via electoral bonds. Earlier, no one knew who funded whom, Modi asserted.
One wonders what Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud might have thought of the sheer mendacity of Modi’s claim that his government made it possible for the public to know who is paying money to which party.
It doesn’t even bother Modi that his government officially stated in the Supreme Court that citizens don’t have a right to know who is funding which political party in the electoral bonds scheme.
Be that as it may, even this bogus assertion by Modi was demolished within 48 hours when The Hindu published an investigation revealing that 33 loss-making front companies (many suspected shell companies) bought Rs.576 crore worth of electoral bonds of which 75% went to the BJP.
After accessing the list of the donor companies from the Election Commission website, The Hindu tracked the nature of these companies through CMIE’s company database and found that they had made aggregate losses of nearly Rs 1 lakh crore in seven years from 2016-17 to 2022-23. Perennially loss-making shell companies have only one purpose – to launder funds for hidden entities.
How did such loss-making companies come to buy electoral bonds? Who are the directors of these companies? Who are the real people behind these shell companies?
All these questions need urgent answers. The fact that the Enforcement Directorate or Central Bureau of Investigation have shown no interest in probing such shell companies is a story in itself.
Also read: Electoral Bonds: All the Details on The Wire’s Dashboard
During the hearing of the electoral bonds case, the CJI had spent considerable time discussing how the scheme was so opaque that it might allow shell companies with losses and no real activity to be used as vehicles for laundering money. The CJI even suggested that there should be amendments to prevent this. At one point, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also agreed that only profit-making companies should be allowed to buy electoral bonds.
So who are the puppeteers controlling these loss-making shell companies? Will the Indian voter ever come to know these facts?
The latest revelations thoroughly expose Modi’s bogus claim that everyone now knows who is paying money and who is receiving it. If his government is serious about finding out the real donors behind the loss-making shell companies, all it needs to do is ask the ED or CBI to question the directors of these companies. The truth will be out in a jiffy. Does Modi have the courage to do something as simple as this?
It also appears many shell companies were created after the electoral bonds scheme was announced. The scheme itself specified that only existing companies, with a record of three years of existence, could participate in bond purchases. This clause also appears to have been flagrantly violated. This needs a separate inquiry.
There are many aspects that need to be probed. The ball is in the court of the prime minister, whose slogan, “Na Khaoonga, Na Khaane Doonga” lies in tatters.
