The Congress on Sunday used the court-directed registration of an FIR against Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Karnataka for allegedly using the now-scrapped electoral bonds as an extortion tool to press for her resignation.
There was no immediate response from the finance ministry or Sitharaman to the FIR or the Congress demand.
On Saturday, the Tilak Nagar police in Bengaluru had registered an FIR against Sitharaman for allegedly misusing electoral bonds to extort money from companies with the help of enforcement agencies. Apart from Sitharaman, the FIR has named the Enforcement Directorate, BJP Karnataka unit president B.Y. Vijayendra and senior party leader from the state, Nalin Kumar Kateel.
The court order was issued on a complaint filed by Adarsh R. Iyer, co-president of Janaadhikaara Sangharsha Parishath. Flagging the case, Congress spokesman and senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi billed it a vindication of what the party has been saying from the day the scheme was introduced in 2018 — that it was an extortion mechanism and gave undue advantage to the ruling party.
He said the electoral bonds scheme was in effect a "Extortionist BJP Scheme’’, borrowing a leaf from Prime Minister’s playbook of creating new acronyms. The Congress said it was both against the basic structure of the Constitution and denied a level playing field to all political parties in the electoral fray.
Congress communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh sought to spell out the modus operandi of extortion through the electoral bonds scheme. "There are four ways: Chanda do, dhanda lo (pay donation, get business) that is prepaid bribe; theka lo, rishvat do (get the contracts and then pay) — that is postpaid bribe; hafta vasooli (extortion) – that is post-raid bribe; and farzi company (shell companies).’’
Announced in the Budget of 2018-19, the electoral bonds scheme was scrapped earlier this year by the Supreme Court, which found this way of collecting money for political parties "unconstitutional and manifestly arbitrary’’ for allowing blanket anonymity to donors.
The court saw the potential of extortion inherent in the scheme, noting that the party with the information could coerce those who have not contributed to it. Under the scheme, donor information was with the SBI, lending credibility to the apprehension that the government can access this despite repeated denials by the Modi dispensation, which projected the scheme as a way to clean up political funding.