Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee official spokesperson Priyanka Dandi has called upon voters to see through the plan of the BJP government in freezing the accounts of the Congress party with less than two months to go for the general elections.
All the bank accounts of the Congress Party, Youth Congress and NSUI have been frozen on the ground that the Congress Party had delayed the filing of IT returns for the party funds, obtained from the public as donations, during 2018-19. The party was directed to pay penalties plus interest amounting to ₹115 crore, Ms. Priyanka told a media conference, here, on Monday.
Alleging that the BJP was trying to cripple the Congress Party financially by freezing its bank account, fearing that the people would return the party to power after its victory in Karnataka and Telangana States, she said that electioneering without money was a very difficult task. She drew a parallel between the freezing of the bank accounts of the Congress to ‘demonetisation’, where people had money in their accounts but could not draw the same to meet emergency expenses. She said that it was unfortunate that the Election Commission of India (ECI) was silent on the issue.
Describing the electoral bonds as the ‘biggest extortion racket’ in the history of Independent India, Ms. Priyanka said that the BJP was the biggest beneficiary of the electoral bonds. She alleged that the BJP government had threatened industrialists with raids through the central investigation agencies like the CBI and ED, forcing the industrialists to donate huge sums of money to the BJP by purchasing the bonds. A Hyderabad-based engineering company has donated ₹960 crore to the BJP by procuring the bonds.
They had purchased the bonds on April 11, 2023, and exactly a month later, they bagged the contract for a ₹14,000 crore project. She alleged that 15 companies had made donations to the BJP after ED and CBI raids on them.
