Congress To Raise Electoral Bonds Issue In Parliament

The Congress will raise the electoral bonds issue in the ongoing parliament session and move a breach of privilege motion against the then minister of state for finance for "lying" in the Rajya Sabha, party spokesperson Gaurav Gogoi said on Tuesday.

Briefing mediapersons, Mr Gogoi said the Election Commission in its letter to the law and justice ministry in May 2017 had expressed its opposition to the scheme "as the source of funding and the party which takes such donations cannot be found out".

Similarly, the Reserve Bank of India too had opposed the scheme.

Despite knowing this, the then MoS for finance told a "horrendous lie" in the upper house that the government received no complaint from the EC, Mr Gogoi said.

The Congress members will move a motion of "breach of privilege" against the then minister, he added.
P Radhakrishnan was the Minister of State for Finance back then, however, Mr Gogoi did not take his name.

Mr Gogoi also alleged that senior bureaucrats were "coaching" the BJP government on how to tackle the issue as it had been "cornered" by the opposition.

"We want the BJP government to give details of the scheme," he said, adding that it was only the BJP which would benefit from the scheme as it gets huge donations from corporates.

This issue "stinks of a major scam" as it is "nothing but a legitimate bribery", he said.

The government has not revealed the action taken by it on the "concerns" expressed by the EC and the RBI on the matter and it has "wilfully" avoided giving answers.

To expose the commissions and omissions of the government and its mismanagement on the economic front, the Congress will organise ''Bharat Bachao Andolan'' in Delhi on December 14, he said.

Another party spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said the government ignored all the objections of EC and RBI on political fundings and implemented the scheme which has "only benefitted the ruling BJP".