Come clean on poll bonds: Oppn to PM

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 22

The Congress-led Opposition today stepped up its attack against the government over electoral bonds and demanded answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Congress MPs assembled outside the Mahatma Gandhi statue in Parliament House and raised slogans against the electoral bond scheme, demanding its rollback.

Senior Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Madhusudan Mistry, Jairam Ramesh, Adhir Ranjan Choudhary and Manish Tewari joined the protest in which all party MPs carried placards and posters against the electoral bond plan.

Later, the Congress cited new RTI documents to accuse the BJP of accepting electoral bonds from a firm that was probed for terror funding. “Is this your nationalism,” asked AICC chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala. The Opposition parties asked the PM to reply to allegations of breach of electoral bond rules that have been revealed through the new RTI information.

The parties sought to raise the issue in the Rajya Sabha today but could not.

Outside the Houses, though the Congress-led Opposition stepped up its offensive on the electoral bond scheme with Manish Tewari demanding a proper discussion in Parliament and alleging, “This is a threat to democracy.”

CPM and CPI also attacked the government, saying the scheme had “legalised corrpution in election funding.”

Surjewala, in a tweet, later tagged a news report that claimed the government had made SBI accept expired electoral bonds sold in illegal window. “Is this a government or a factory of lies?” asked Surjewala.

AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also cited the same report on Twitter and said, “Is it true that the objections of RBI and Election Commission were rejected? Secondly, it is written in the report that during the Karnataka elections, the Prime Minister allowed the sale of the bond illegally? Is it true?”