Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay 
The Bharatiya Janata Party under Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 on a slew of promises and expectations greatly constructed around his undertaking to eradicate the problem of corruption in India. It started a long tale involving Modi and corruption although paradoxically, a decade later, accusations have turned on their head.
Now, it is time for the prime minister and his party to be accused of evading the charges against the combine. If nothing else, the BJP and its entire leadership are guilty of not divulging information on the anonymous donations, disproportionately made to the party between March 2018 and February 2023, when the Supreme Court declared pronounced the electoral bond scheme as being against the basic tenets of the Constitution.
It needs to be recalled that the current stance of the BJP stands in sharp contrast to its posture a decade ago. Coincidentally, Modi’s anti-corruption narrative for the 2014 parliamentary elections was a quarter of a century after the 1989 elections saw Rajiv Gandhi, also a Congress prime minister, being voted out of office, mainly on the issue of corruption in high places. In both instances – against Rajiv’s government and the one headed by Manmohan Singh – investigations and insinuations were probed but came to a naught.
V.P. Singh bowed out of office less than a year after assuming office so he had the privilege to claim that his successors were gentle with Rajiv’s legacy and memory and did not meticulously probe accusations. Modi has no such advantage and none of the allegations he levelled against the Congress-led UPA regime and Singh personally, could be proven by his regime.
But he has not clarified to the people why he misled them by making allegations which his government has been unable to establish. He certainly owes an explanation to the people why he made false accusations which could not be substantiated in court and have now been given up.
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Not only has there been no expression of regret, but another ten years later, as one more parliamentary elections draw near, he continues on the path of first levelling charges and then opening corruption cases against several opposition leaders. He is also holding many of them in custody.
Non-disclosure is a common complaint made against various opposition leaders even though the BJP is showing no urgency to reveal all facts regarding the electoral bonds it received. These details are at the disposal of both the government and party.
In contrast to continuing with past practice of hurling one allegation after another at adversaries, Modi and the BJP are silent even though they stand accused of rampant corruption by grabbing almost the majority of the veiled electoral funding tool, dubiously introduced and passed by the government in 2018.
That the BJP has several skeletons in its cupboard, which it is frantically trying to hide, is clear from stonewalling tactics whenever demands are made of the BJP to reveal names of its donors.
Instead of taking the lead, which it should because it has been the ruling party for the past decade, besides also being the largest recipient of the electoral bonds, party spokespersons are busy hurling charges against other parties on a daily basis.
It is necessary to recall some of the promises made by the BJP in its election manifesto in 2014. To begin with, the party asserted that other nations “even with smaller size and lesser resources, have surpassed us in development parameters” because of “lack of openness in government and lack of people’s participation”. The BJP contended that this resulted in “concentration of power in a few hands, and lack of transparency, breeding corruption and nepotism on a massive scale”.
Five elementary questions needs to be flagged at this point: One, what kind of transparency was ushered in the domain of electoral funding by the electoral bonds? Two, is it not a fact that the Modi government is most centralised regime India has ever witnessed?
Three, was not the entire scheme skewed in favour of the BJP by opening the avenues for anonymous donations to come pouring into the party coffers for quid pro quo on part of the government? Four, did not the scheme allow money laundering in a big way?
Lastly, is the reluctance of the BJP in revealing names of its donors an indication of proof that reciprocal decisions were taken and that some of the ‘formal’ donors were not the ‘actual’ ones, thereby suggesting that the standard practice of converting ‘black’ into ‘white’ and vice versa was rampant under the scheme?
Corruption, said the aforesaid manifesto very authoritatively, “is a manifestation of poor governance…(and) reflects the bad intentions of those sitting in power”. The BJP under Modi’s leadership further promised to usher in the following:
- Public awareness
- Technology enabled e-governance, minimising discretion in the citizen-government interface
- System-based, policy-driven governance – making it transparent.
Are these not golden words which must be shown to the BJP? Quite clearly, the BJP stands accused of betraying its own promises to the voters and it is up to the political adversaries of the party to remind them of this in a comprehensible manner.
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Significantly, in its manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the word corruption was used primarily as a malaise of the past, because by then, it was contended, a “corruption-free Bharat” had come into existence.
Significantly, although the electoral bonds were rolled out barely a year before, there was no mention of further electoral reforms in 2019 (barring promising simultaneous elections) and how the party wished to additionally improve the vexed issue political funding.
It was rather odd that a major legislation, which the BJP argued revolutionised “political funding by introducing an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability”, should not have been flagged in its “Sankalp Patra”, essentially a litany of what all, according to the party, were the positives of the government, the steps it had taken so far.
No mention of electoral bonds was made even though the Congress promised to scrap the scheme if it came to power. Significantly, the tide had begun to turn against the instrument for the Election Commission of India told the Supreme Court during peak campaigning that the scheme “hit transparency in political funding…contrary to government claims” and opened the field for foreign corporates to “interfere”.
Although it is unfortunate that the apex court eventually took five years since the above-mentioned hearing to adjudicate on the matter, it is now time for complete transparency.
There is a strong probability that attempts of political parties to veil the identity of donors will fail in the event of the judiciary passing an order like it did for the State Bank of India which initially, obviously at the government’s behest, tried preventing any data from being published in the public domain.
It would be thereby prudent for every party to follow those who have already declared the names of their donors. The beginning should be made by the BJP because it has no fig leaf to hide behind and cover what it intended to make opaque with the passage of the law in 2018.
If it does not, the BJP and Modi will be open to accusations that in less than a decade they tried to make corruption more deeply entrenched but were worsted by the Supreme Court’s unanimous verdict.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is an author and journalist based in Delhi-NCR. His latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project, and he’s also the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times. His X handle is @NilanjanUdwin.