Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh on April 1 said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has “fully lied to the nation in his latest interview” with Tamil television channel Thanthi TV.
Mr. Modi on March 31 rejected the suggestion that the electoral bond issue caused a setback to his government, saying no system is perfect and any shortcoming could be improved upon.
Also read: Why did the Supreme Court invalidate electoral bonds? | Explained
“The Electoral Bond Scheme was designed to be fully anonymous. In other words, Mr. Modi wanted to hide from the public the details of “where funds have come from [to political parties], and how they are being used,” the Congress leader posted on X.
The Congress leader said that for six years, between 2018 and 2024, not a single detail of which party got funds from which donor was revealed to the public.
Also read: Electoral bonds full data | Complete list of donors, parties and unique numbers
“The SBI was lying in the Supreme Court when it demanded a 3-month extension to match donor data with the political parties. It took our team five lines of Python code and less than fifteen seconds to match each donor with the political party they donated to,” he added.
The Prime Minister, in the interview, said it is due to the electoral bond system put in by his government that the sources of funding and its beneficiaries could be found out.
“If a trail is available today, it is because of the presence of bonds,” he said, asking if any agency could tell about the sources of funding and their beneficiaries for the polls before 2014, the year he came to power.
