Electoral bonds are bearer bonds, introduced as a mechanism for individuals and companies to donate money to political parties in India in 2018 by the BJP government. They were introduced without consultation and ignoring objections of the Election Commission and the RBI. Electoral bonds worth Rs.
'In the early hours of Saturday, when the people of Maharashtra were fast asleep, the country awoke to strife and unfreedom. News of the death of democracy – the tearing up of constitutional norms – was broken by the executioner-in-chief, Narendra Modi, through his preferred medium, Twitter. Curiously, the morning newspapers had all led with the headline that the Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray was going to be Maharashtra chief minister.
'NCP leader Ajit Pawar sparked alarm, controversy and furious debate in Maharashtra this morning after leading his party in support of the BJP in its bid to retain power in Maharashtra. Mr Pawar, who was last month named by the Enforcement Directorate in the Rs. 25,000-crore Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank Ltd. scam, was sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister. Seconds earlier the BJP's Devendra Fadnavis, whose government had repeatedly attacked Ajit Pawar over alleged corruption charges, had been sworn in as Chief Minister for a second term.
'Though the Ministry of Finance had thought about sharing details of the electoral bond scheme with political parties and seeking the public’s comments on it, the idea was dropped after a presentation before the prime minister on August 21, 2017... RTI activist Bharadwaj says it is apparent that during the meeting with the prime minister, the decision to not consult political parties and not circulate the draft scheme to all national and state parties with a 15-day window to seek their comments was taken.
'The Bhartiya Janta Party took a large donation from a company that is now being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for facilitating “terror funding,” financial declarations by the BJP itself reveal. RKW Developers Ltd, a company at the heart of a probe by the ED for carrying out transactions with and buying properties from the late Iqbal Memon alias Iqbal Mirchi – an accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts and a close aide of mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim – gave money to the ruling party, according to the BJP’s filings with the Election Commission.
'The Prime Minister’s Office under Narendra Modi reportedly ordered for rules about electoral bonds – which the Centre itself had notified just two months earlier – to be broken in March 2018, ahead of assembly elections in six states. The broken rules, Nitin Sethi reports for HuffPost India, were first called an ‘exception’ but quickly turned into the norm. The report is based on government documents obtained under the Right to Information Act by transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired)...
'...Journalist Nitin Sethi, who authored the report, has earlier on November 18-19, published two reports in Huffpost India, revealing the stringent opposition from the Reserve Bank of India, the Election Commission and opposition parties on the unveiling of the controversial electoral bearer bonds. It has been revealed that the Narendra Modi-led government dismissed the Election Commission of India’s strident opposition to electoral bonds, lied to the Indian Parliament and finally resorted to a hurried cover-up when it's misstatements were caught...'
'MTB Nagraj, Byrati Basavraj, KC Narayana Gowda, S T Somashekar, Mahesh Kumathalli and Anand Singh, all of them-the contesting candidates from the BJP reportedly have amassed a vast amount of wealth between July 2018 and October 2019. According to the affidavits submitted with their nominations: Anand Sing now has assets worth Rs 104.42 crore, which is 33 crore more than what it was just 18 months ago. MTB Nagraj, who is a candidate from the Hoskote constituency, has declared assets worth Rs 1,223 crore; in 2018, his wealth was worth Rs 1,015 crore.
'Before unveiling the electoral bonds scheme – which renders political funding more opaque and allows parties to receive unlimited amounts of money without having to disclose where it came from – the Narendra Modi government ignored the Reserve Bank of India’s recommendation not to go ahead with it, HuffPost India has reported. Four days before Arun Jaitley was to announce the scheme in his Budget speech of 2017, a tax official going through the documents realised that the change would require amendments to the Reserve Bank of India Act, Nithin Sethi reports.
'Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath knew about the case involving real estate giant Ansal Developers and there were "orders from above" to close the case, Uttar Pradesh Minister Swati Singh has purportedly told a state police officer, demanding that she close the case. The audio clip of the conversation, which was widely circulated, had landed the minister in hot water, with the Chief Minister asking the state police chief to submit a report on the matter within 24 hours. Yogi Adityanath had also summoned the minister...'
